Diary of Inconsequential Being

Saturday 25^th March

I am on my way to collect my daughter. She has decided to go to Thorpe Park with some friends and one of the dads and I agreed on one of us taking them there and the other one bringing them back.

The journey to Thorpe Park goes surprisingly smooth. Too smooth. Just before the M25 meets the M3 I am supposed to take the fifth exit at a roundabout and stay on the A308. For some reason the route seems suddenly awfully long. I am sure it looked a lot shorter on the Google map I consulted before setting off (I don’t use satnav). I keep driving in what I think is the most likely direction. It takes me a couple of minutes to realise that I am hideously lost. I go back to the M25, taking extra care not to join the traffic heading to London. At the roundabout I perform a similar manoeuvre as before. Again, I find myself back on the A308. Again, I get lost.

Finally I pull into a Tesco (future novelists should make that sentence their go-to cliché. There is always a Tesco to pull into, just like “dusk” always “falls”). After a couple of enquiries and suggestions I decide to use my phone’s built-in Google maps app to guide myself to Thorpe Park. To be honest I feel I have no other choice. The two members of staff who help me out look at me as if I am mad after I say that I use neither a satnav nor Google maps.

The voice telling me to pull out of the car park cannot be described as robotic, but neither as human. It is not warm either. But then, again, what do I expect? Coffee and a chocolate muffin? I suddenly feel hungry.

After three quarters of an hour, during which I exhaust my year’s quota of swear words, I find Thorpe Park. All this time my daughter has been trying to get hold of me, concerned that I was not there at the appointed time. When I tell her what has just happened, she just asks: why didn’t you use Google maps?

Sunday 26^th March

The papers still carry the Westminster attacker story. It is funny (both strange and ha ha) that Adrian Elms (to call him by his real name) is called a terrorist whereas Jo Cox’s murderer is being given the “lone wolf” label with mental health issues added on to mitigate the effect of his evil act.

The house is eerily silent. It normally is these days. Both my children have given up playing their instruments. My son used to play saxophone first and then went for the guitar. My daughter, on the hand, plumped for cello and later on for flute. There was nothing better than the sound of him playing guitar and her playing flute mid-morning on a Sunday.

Now they both sleep until noon.

I set up the ironing board and switch the telly on. I am being ever so careful and considerate. I know the girls went to bed late last night. As the first goals go in on Match of the Day, I hear the sound of rushed steps on the stairs and eventually voices in the kitchen.

The silence is broken (and that is another cliché for wannabe writers. No worries, I shall invoice you in due course).

Monday 27^th March

I am now convinced that we have a birds’ nest in our bush in the front garden. Not being a connoisseur of tweets and songs, I am unable to say what sort of birds they are. All I know is that they sing at night. By at night, I mean, midnight. They must be fearless, too, because the local cats still have not dealt with them in the way that only cats know how to deal with midnight-hour-singing animals of the avian variety. Perhaps, although they sing beautifully (and I can attest to that), they can all copy the Google Maps voice, neither robotic nor warm. Enough to keep the local cats away.

© 2017

Next Post: “London Cycle Diaries”, to be published on Saturday 20^th May at 6pm (GMT)

Diary of Inconsequential Being

Saturday 26^th November

A sequence of events not connected to one another and yet eerily linked. Early morning and intertwined limbs (my wife’s and mine) disentangle slowly. I get up to go to the toilet and as I sit down the phone rings (simultaneously. Now, that’s what I call a coincidence). I return to the bedroom to find my spouse handing me the blower: “It’s from the BBC”, she says. I grab the telephone and sit on the edge of the bed.

Fidel Castro Ruz has died. The female voice on the other side is calm and reassuring as if she were concerned about my wellbeing. She would like me to come to the BBC World Service studio and do a series of interviews throughout the day. I remember that I have guests coming tonight for my birthday gathering, ten days after I turned forty-five.

I agree to come in but only until twelve noon. After all, no bearded geezer will stop me from indulging in one of my favourite pastimes: cooking for a group of friends. I jump in the shower. A taxi, paid for by the corporation, picks me up.

Later on, as I’m mixing paprika, coriander and other herbs and spices in the pan, I think back to the events of the day. The naïve Dr and writer who alternated slots with me and whose comments were cliché-ridden; the “expert” on Cuba who refused to give straightforward answers to questions related to the socioeconomic and political situation in my island and opted instead for the well-used formula of highlighting deficiencies in British polity to cover up for Castro’s mistakes. I look back on the crowds in Miami dancing on the streets and the poisonous, right-wing Fox News-driven one-sided reports on American television. And I think to myself: Not to offend non-Cubans, but if even a fraction of those Fidel-supporting westerners had thrown their lot with my people decades ago when we needed them, upping sticks in the process and going to live on the island like Cubans, depending on a ration card for their next meal, maybe, just maybe, we would have arrived at the much-vaunted socialist paradise long time ago. Same with those who disparage our right to make our decisions. If, instead of sniping from the sides, they had ended their ineffective blockade decades ago, maybe, just maybe, Fidel’s grip on power would not have lasted that long and he would have not repressed his own people whilst using the embargo as an easy, go-to excuse.

The meal is a success.

Sunday 27^th November

My wife has put some seeds out for the birds and through the lounge window I see them eating them. This gives me an idea: perhaps I could film the scene in a sort of Blair Witch Project-style format. Handheld camera capturing nature at its purest and most innocent in metropolitan London. But not today, it’s cloudy and there is not much light. You can barely tell the birds from the trees. It is so overcast that only when the flutter of wings becomes obvious can you be sure that there is animal presence in our back garden. Of the feather variety. Definitely tomorrow.

Monday 28^th November

I give up on the Blair Witch Project idea. There aren’t that many birds in our garden and the ones that pay a visit are, how to put it nicely, rather boring. Only when one of the cats tries its luck by hiding in the dry and sparse grass, something interesting happens. But the cats are clumsy and the birds are quick.

Tuesday 29^th November

Whilst getting my bike from the side passage I see a couple of wood pigeons behaving strangely. The one I take to be a male pigeon is pushing its beak in between the other’s legs (which I assume it is a female). At first it looks like some sort of game or courtship. But, then I think I spot a look of disgust and fear in the female’s eyes. As if it did not ask, nor want to be a part of this. I stay still, watching the male attempting once more to peck at or grab something from between the female’s legs. The female starts to retreat. I think, rather amused and shocked at the same time: who knows, maybe in the same way I have been watching the birds through the lounge window, they have been watching my telly, following the US election, faces and beaks stuck to the glass, without me noticing them. It might explain also some of the bullying behaviour when it comes to seeds consumption. I consider the Blair Witch Project idea once more.

© 2017

Next Post: “Thoughts in Progress”, to be published on Saturday 11^th February at 6pm (GMT)

Diary of Inconsequential Being

Wednesday 9th November

Fucking 'ell!

Thursday 10th November

Shock

Friday 11th November

Denial

Saturday 12th November

Bargaining

Sunday 13th November

Guilt

Monday 14th November

Anger

Tuesday 15th November

Depression

Wednesday 16th November

My birthday. Acceptance and hope.

© 2016

Next Post: “Thoughts in Progress”, to be published on Saturday 17th December at 6pm (GMT)

Diary of Inconsequential Being

It might not come as a surprise to many that one of the marks of modern life is how different the world of celebrity has become. Whereas in years gone by there was a certain mystery and suspense around famous people, we now face an information overload. This is not, in case you are wondering, one of those “back in my days things were better” type of column. Especially because, a) I’m only forty-four-years-old (soon to be forty-five) and, b) because my life so far has straddled two countries and equal amount of continents.

Yet, I, too, have noticed how inane and repetitive celebrities’ output has become. So, I am joining the fray tonight. This is a new space in which I will discuss my quotidian (un)exciting, inconsequential life experiences. Any attempt to bore you is intentional. Content will be repetitive occasionally and very often devoid of meaning and depth. Feel free to yawn. In fact, I encourage you to.

Monday 5^th September

I have now been back at work for two days but it is only today that the children are returning to school. On my way to work a car comes within a whisker of kissing the frame of my bike but it ends with no amorous encounter between the two modes of transport. The automobile in question is not some rare species, just an old, battered Ford. Its size is never less than spectacular and its colour is the typical red commonly found on British roads.

A sky-blue, seasonally-warm, early morning makes my day already. My journey to work lasts the customary twenty-odd minutes and nothing important happens. The traffic lights are still in the same place, jumped through by the same threatening-looking lorry drivers and bespectacled bus drivers.

On the news today: Keith Vaz is to step down as Commons committee chair after sex claims and Theresa May refuses to commit to Brexit pledges on immigration and NHS. Sex and immigration. I bet a large part of the population of these isles is getting their jollies right now.

I begin to read "Oscar Wilde" by H. Montgomery Hyde.

Tuesday 6^th September

The young. I could watch them forever, crossing roads without a care in the world, heads bowed down, eyes never leaving their gadgets, and yet, stepping out of the way of a rush-hour, speeding car at the last minute.

Until one day they will be lucky no more.

I stop at the same busy crossroads on my way to work and notice for the umpteenth time that we need a green man on this corner. Reason number 1, there are about four secondary schools within a radius mile of each other, plus half a dozen primaries. Reason number 2, visibility is very poor because of the road layout. There aren’t four corners per se, but five or six places to cross from, all of them equally dangerous. Reason number three… forget reason number three, the light has changed.

The papers are full of the just-cancelled junior doctors’ strike. The front pages betray their usual political alliances. Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, is more fortunate this time when he comes on Radio 4. No one gets his surname wrong. Ah, my kingdom for a spoonerism!

Wednesday 7^th September

I am thinking of investing in a pannier. My rucksack feels heavy and my neck is beginning to ache. I ring up Cancer Research UK and find out that I can still sign up for the Brighton marathon next year. Later on tonight I will submit my registration fee and the tortuous but rather exhilarating prospect of running twenty-six miles again is enough to carry me through the day.

My daughter is cooking tonight. She usually does Tuesdays and Wednesdays whilst I still cook on Thursdays. Fridays are “unhealthy food night” and Sundays and Mondays it is my wife’s turn to take over the kitchen. Saturdays are LTOOD day (Left To Our Own Devices, in case you are wondering).

I love my daughter’s recipes. She is always inventive. I wish I had been that daring at her age but between being born in a country where men in the kitchen are a no-no and living with four women under the same roof, I never had the same opportunities.

And to be honest, I did not look for them either.

Totally random image. Photo taken by the blog author

Sports Direct is in hot water. The company has been caught red-handed after a Guardian-led investigation uncovered practices that could easily be compared to those of a Victorian workhouse.

There is still good, investigative journalism around. The kind that does not depend on stories on sex and immigration to ramp up its sales.

© 2016

Next Post: “Thoughts in Progress”, to be published on Saturday 5^th November at 6pm (GMT)