I am that, you are that, and that is all there is.
Ancient Seers
Monday, October 30, 2006
People Or Planet
Week Four: Sunday 22 – Saturday 28 October
Whoosh! Where did the month go? I knew my time in Falmouth with my wife and daughter would go fast; I didn’t realise it would go this fast. My body still feels like I just emptied a van of belongings into a house, after first loading them into the van and driving the van for ten hours. But that was four weeks ago. Four weeks, just like that.
Time is a relative thing, that’s for sure. I mean all time is a consistent measure: every second lasts the same length of time; sixty seconds always makes a minute and sixty minutes always makes an hour. So time should be constant, but it is anything but. Five minutes spent in the company of a bore can feel like an hour; an hour spent in the company of someone fascinating can seem like five minutes.
Anyway, whatever time is or isn’t, does or doesn’t, this last month feels like it has past very quickly. Maybe I am just getting older, technically middle aged, so all time seems faster because I have less of it to spend. I’ve lived more of my life than I have left to live, so it feels like it is going faster. Just like a cup of tea, a biscuit or a meal appears to get finished more quickly when there is less than half of it left.
Although, it’s questionable just how long any of us have got left on planet earth. These days I constantly see references to ‘saving the planet’ and ‘the destruction of the planet’.
But are they not completely false and misleading statements? Is the reality not that yes the human race is damaging the planet, but once that damage reaches a certain point then the planet will no longer be able to sustain human life?
When that happens humans will start to die in large numbers, possibly even being wiped out completely. At that point the planet will begin to make an immediate, if not full, recovery. So it’s not the planet that is at risk: the human race is destroying it, but only up to the point where it will no longer sustain human life.
I think there is massive confusion about this issue: it needs clarity and people need to understand the reality. The human race is in real danger of extinction; the planet, while battered and bruised by human treatment over the last 250 odd years, is in no real danger of ceasing to exist.
The other statement that got me recently was that, due to our lifestyles, the human race needs three planets to live on. But in just over a hundred years the human population of earth has more or less tripled; so regardless of our lifestyles, it makes sense for us to need three planets because there is three times as many of us than there has ever been before.
It’s the human race then that clearly needs to be saved, not the planet. And the way to save the human race appears to be by reducing our numbers and stopping those of us who do from treating the planet with complete and utter contempt and disrespect.
So no chance then!
Whoosh! Where did the month go? I knew my time in Falmouth with my wife and daughter would go fast; I didn’t realise it would go this fast. My body still feels like I just emptied a van of belongings into a house, after first loading them into the van and driving the van for ten hours. But that was four weeks ago. Four weeks, just like that.
Time is a relative thing, that’s for sure. I mean all time is a consistent measure: every second lasts the same length of time; sixty seconds always makes a minute and sixty minutes always makes an hour. So time should be constant, but it is anything but. Five minutes spent in the company of a bore can feel like an hour; an hour spent in the company of someone fascinating can seem like five minutes.
Anyway, whatever time is or isn’t, does or doesn’t, this last month feels like it has past very quickly. Maybe I am just getting older, technically middle aged, so all time seems faster because I have less of it to spend. I’ve lived more of my life than I have left to live, so it feels like it is going faster. Just like a cup of tea, a biscuit or a meal appears to get finished more quickly when there is less than half of it left.
Although, it’s questionable just how long any of us have got left on planet earth. These days I constantly see references to ‘saving the planet’ and ‘the destruction of the planet’.
But are they not completely false and misleading statements? Is the reality not that yes the human race is damaging the planet, but once that damage reaches a certain point then the planet will no longer be able to sustain human life?
When that happens humans will start to die in large numbers, possibly even being wiped out completely. At that point the planet will begin to make an immediate, if not full, recovery. So it’s not the planet that is at risk: the human race is destroying it, but only up to the point where it will no longer sustain human life.
I think there is massive confusion about this issue: it needs clarity and people need to understand the reality. The human race is in real danger of extinction; the planet, while battered and bruised by human treatment over the last 250 odd years, is in no real danger of ceasing to exist.
The other statement that got me recently was that, due to our lifestyles, the human race needs three planets to live on. But in just over a hundred years the human population of earth has more or less tripled; so regardless of our lifestyles, it makes sense for us to need three planets because there is three times as many of us than there has ever been before.
It’s the human race then that clearly needs to be saved, not the planet. And the way to save the human race appears to be by reducing our numbers and stopping those of us who do from treating the planet with complete and utter contempt and disrespect.
So no chance then!
Monday, October 23, 2006
Shout The House Down
Week Three: Sunday 15 – Saturday 21 October
So much for Sunday being the day of rest and relaxation. This week Sunday was spent doing work for my course: I am studying writing, so you have to write, as well as read, a great deal to make any sort of progress.
It can be difficult to settle down to do either seriously when your daughter is jumping about, itching to be entertained and occupied. That complication is added to when, in the true tradition of writers, so I’m led to believe, and happy to concur with, I find myself more than willing to entertain and occupy my daughter rather than knuckle down to the 'serious business'.
Wife to the rescue – as normal! She took my daughter and herself off for a long walk somewhere; hopefully somewhere nice, but anywhere really that could occupy a few hours and enable me to have some peace and make some progress. Or at least get some work down.
Despite the realisation of the marked difference between writing casually and writing for the purposes of passing a writing course and becoming a professional writer, I did get some work done.
I even managed a text conversation with my nephew who was at Easter Road in Edinburgh, watching my beloved Hibernian FC play our archrivals and city neighbours Heart of Midlothian FC. We (Hibs) were two up after twenty odd minutes: I bashed the keyboard with glee as I contemplated the final score; it ended up two apiece! Life is a roller coaster, Ronan Keating tells us; so can ninety-minutes of football be!
The other main event of the week was our daughter’s first day at nursery. She was booked in for a half-day on the Tuesday afternoon. We did all the preparatory work beforehand, so we thought. We talked about it with her in enthusiastic tones and made sure, so we believed, that she knew what was going to happen.
It was a rite of passage all round. My wife has been a full-time mother since our daughter was born, except for a four month stint when she worked twenty-hours a week while her mother visited us from Zimbabwe and took on the traditional role of Gogo (Sindebele for grandmother). While I have been the main breadwinner, I have been a very involved father and so our daughter has not had too much unattached time away from either of us.
All went well at the nursery until my wife explained to our daughter that she was leaving her for a couple of hours with the nice lady and lovely children. Before she was out of earshot of the building she could hear our sweet, gentle, innocent child shouting at the top of her voice in a deep, angry tone that a poltergeist would be proud of.
One half of my wife was cursed with pain at what our child was suffering; the other half with an unbridled urge to run in to the nursery, grab our daughter and never show face again. Being a man, she spared me the detail until I got home that evening; my fragile sensitivities would not have been able to cope.
At least we now know, without question, that our little miss has a voice, and she isn’t afraid to use it. I pity the first boy who crosses her!
It turned out our daughter was, eventually, repossessed of her more natural, pleasant nature and settled down; her second visit, on the Thursday afternoon, produced only a few tears before she joined in with all the activities. By Thursday night she was asking me to come along the next time so she could show me where she goes.
If only adults could relearn to live in the moment, good, bad or indifferent, like children do, and then move on without harm, damage or grudges.
So much for Sunday being the day of rest and relaxation. This week Sunday was spent doing work for my course: I am studying writing, so you have to write, as well as read, a great deal to make any sort of progress.
It can be difficult to settle down to do either seriously when your daughter is jumping about, itching to be entertained and occupied. That complication is added to when, in the true tradition of writers, so I’m led to believe, and happy to concur with, I find myself more than willing to entertain and occupy my daughter rather than knuckle down to the 'serious business'.
Wife to the rescue – as normal! She took my daughter and herself off for a long walk somewhere; hopefully somewhere nice, but anywhere really that could occupy a few hours and enable me to have some peace and make some progress. Or at least get some work down.
Despite the realisation of the marked difference between writing casually and writing for the purposes of passing a writing course and becoming a professional writer, I did get some work done.
I even managed a text conversation with my nephew who was at Easter Road in Edinburgh, watching my beloved Hibernian FC play our archrivals and city neighbours Heart of Midlothian FC. We (Hibs) were two up after twenty odd minutes: I bashed the keyboard with glee as I contemplated the final score; it ended up two apiece! Life is a roller coaster, Ronan Keating tells us; so can ninety-minutes of football be!
The other main event of the week was our daughter’s first day at nursery. She was booked in for a half-day on the Tuesday afternoon. We did all the preparatory work beforehand, so we thought. We talked about it with her in enthusiastic tones and made sure, so we believed, that she knew what was going to happen.
It was a rite of passage all round. My wife has been a full-time mother since our daughter was born, except for a four month stint when she worked twenty-hours a week while her mother visited us from Zimbabwe and took on the traditional role of Gogo (Sindebele for grandmother). While I have been the main breadwinner, I have been a very involved father and so our daughter has not had too much unattached time away from either of us.
All went well at the nursery until my wife explained to our daughter that she was leaving her for a couple of hours with the nice lady and lovely children. Before she was out of earshot of the building she could hear our sweet, gentle, innocent child shouting at the top of her voice in a deep, angry tone that a poltergeist would be proud of.
One half of my wife was cursed with pain at what our child was suffering; the other half with an unbridled urge to run in to the nursery, grab our daughter and never show face again. Being a man, she spared me the detail until I got home that evening; my fragile sensitivities would not have been able to cope.
At least we now know, without question, that our little miss has a voice, and she isn’t afraid to use it. I pity the first boy who crosses her!
It turned out our daughter was, eventually, repossessed of her more natural, pleasant nature and settled down; her second visit, on the Thursday afternoon, produced only a few tears before she joined in with all the activities. By Thursday night she was asking me to come along the next time so she could show me where she goes.
If only adults could relearn to live in the moment, good, bad or indifferent, like children do, and then move on without harm, damage or grudges.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
The Seat Stays Up
Week Two: Sunday 8 – Saturday 14 October
Sunday is the traditional day of rest: despite any religious leanings it is a maxim that I like to embrace wholeheartedly, and my wife is right behind me on that one. So although there was still much to do in our new home, we decided that a home extends beyond the bricks and mortar of the walls and includes the surrounding area, the town where the home is based.
Sunday, then, was a day to get out and about to check out Falmouth and find out what treats, and tricks, lay in store. Besides, experience has shown us that your home takes shape regardless: all in good time. And we should know as the house we now find ourselves in is the eighth we have lived in since we married four-and-a-half short years ago.
We should learn to pay the rent more often! It’s actually nothing as sinister as that. We sold our flat in Edinburgh just after we were married and moved to Portugal, where we planned to set up a business and settle. A combination of an unexpected pregnancy and a lesson in Portuguese business brought us back to Scotland sooner than we anticipated; but not soon enough for house prices to have climbed beyond our means.
The lesson we learnt, the hard way as all the best lessons are allegedly learnt, in Portugal was that the only way to make a small fortune in that country is to make sure you start with a large one. You don’t so much learn it as get told it once your meagre savings have been dwindled away trying to get your business off the ground. And why would the Portuguese allow ‘strangerros’ to waltz into their beautiful and sunny country and start making a fortune instantly?
The truth is we would have returned to the British Isles anyway for the birth of our child; with house prices rising and our desire for our child to have a full-time mother for the first three years of life, renting was the only option.
Despite me getting a full-time teaching job in the local FE college, we quickly knew that Lockerbie would not be a long stay destination. It seems the town is known only, and universally, as the place where the plane exploded in the sky. It is a legacy anywhere would struggle to recover from; experience tells us that Lockerbie hasn’t, and may never.
A few months into my new job convinced us that not only Lockerbie, but also Dumfries & Galloway would not be a long stay destination. Lovely as the area is, work is limited and FE does not, as popularly believed, stand for Further Education, but Fucking ‘Ell. Ask anyone who knows anything about FE today.
Various circumstances contrived to force us to rent four different properties in Lockerbie in less than three years, twice as many as we rented in our two years in Portugal.
And so we find ourselves in home number eight. Each of our previous rented properties have eventually become a home and a happy place to be. There is no point rushing it. Better to get out and about. The first few journeys to and from University College Falmouth offered enough insight to suggest that our new town of residence has plenty to offer. My wife’s escapes from boxes, cleaning and organising told her the same thing.
The treats appear to be the friendliness of the locals and the laid back vibe against a backdrop of hustle and bustle; and, of course, the seascape and general location. The tricks are definitely the myriad of winding streets that would mislead a skilled orienteer. Cornwall is known as a place of smugglers, hiding their booty in the numerous coastal caves; they could have just as easily have hidden it in the labyrinth of streets as far as I am concerned.
The rest of the week saw more of the same for my wife, looking after our daughter and sorting our life out in our new home. For me, it brought another week of student life to digest and the redirected post full of bills to be settled; a stark reminder that bills need to be paid, whether you have an income or not, and a sobering thought as to the finances for this year of study. It looks like nursery beckons for our daughter and a full-time job for my wife.
There was also a sign above the toilet that read, ‘One out of eight ain’t bad – this seat stays up. Forget at your peril’.
I’ve been warned!
Sunday is the traditional day of rest: despite any religious leanings it is a maxim that I like to embrace wholeheartedly, and my wife is right behind me on that one. So although there was still much to do in our new home, we decided that a home extends beyond the bricks and mortar of the walls and includes the surrounding area, the town where the home is based.
Sunday, then, was a day to get out and about to check out Falmouth and find out what treats, and tricks, lay in store. Besides, experience has shown us that your home takes shape regardless: all in good time. And we should know as the house we now find ourselves in is the eighth we have lived in since we married four-and-a-half short years ago.
We should learn to pay the rent more often! It’s actually nothing as sinister as that. We sold our flat in Edinburgh just after we were married and moved to Portugal, where we planned to set up a business and settle. A combination of an unexpected pregnancy and a lesson in Portuguese business brought us back to Scotland sooner than we anticipated; but not soon enough for house prices to have climbed beyond our means.
The lesson we learnt, the hard way as all the best lessons are allegedly learnt, in Portugal was that the only way to make a small fortune in that country is to make sure you start with a large one. You don’t so much learn it as get told it once your meagre savings have been dwindled away trying to get your business off the ground. And why would the Portuguese allow ‘strangerros’ to waltz into their beautiful and sunny country and start making a fortune instantly?
The truth is we would have returned to the British Isles anyway for the birth of our child; with house prices rising and our desire for our child to have a full-time mother for the first three years of life, renting was the only option.
Despite me getting a full-time teaching job in the local FE college, we quickly knew that Lockerbie would not be a long stay destination. It seems the town is known only, and universally, as the place where the plane exploded in the sky. It is a legacy anywhere would struggle to recover from; experience tells us that Lockerbie hasn’t, and may never.
A few months into my new job convinced us that not only Lockerbie, but also Dumfries & Galloway would not be a long stay destination. Lovely as the area is, work is limited and FE does not, as popularly believed, stand for Further Education, but Fucking ‘Ell. Ask anyone who knows anything about FE today.
Various circumstances contrived to force us to rent four different properties in Lockerbie in less than three years, twice as many as we rented in our two years in Portugal.
And so we find ourselves in home number eight. Each of our previous rented properties have eventually become a home and a happy place to be. There is no point rushing it. Better to get out and about. The first few journeys to and from University College Falmouth offered enough insight to suggest that our new town of residence has plenty to offer. My wife’s escapes from boxes, cleaning and organising told her the same thing.
The treats appear to be the friendliness of the locals and the laid back vibe against a backdrop of hustle and bustle; and, of course, the seascape and general location. The tricks are definitely the myriad of winding streets that would mislead a skilled orienteer. Cornwall is known as a place of smugglers, hiding their booty in the numerous coastal caves; they could have just as easily have hidden it in the labyrinth of streets as far as I am concerned.
The rest of the week saw more of the same for my wife, looking after our daughter and sorting our life out in our new home. For me, it brought another week of student life to digest and the redirected post full of bills to be settled; a stark reminder that bills need to be paid, whether you have an income or not, and a sobering thought as to the finances for this year of study. It looks like nursery beckons for our daughter and a full-time job for my wife.
There was also a sign above the toilet that read, ‘One out of eight ain’t bad – this seat stays up. Forget at your peril’.
I’ve been warned!
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
The Missing Barometer
Week One: Sunday 1 - Saturday 7 October 2006
We arrived in Falmouth around eleven o'clock at night in a hired van full of our belongings; 'we' being my wife, our daughter and, of course, myself. It was a ten hour drive from our previous home/life in Lockerbie, Scotland, including no less than six stops to allow our daughter to banish her continually mounting, and literal, cabin fever.
After we drove through the streets attempting to locate the house that was to be our new home for a year, my thoughts turned to emptying the van as quickly as possible and getting some sleep in order to be as alert as possible for my new start first thing on Monday morning.
With our little one now fast asleep across the passenger seats, and our belongings being relatively meagre, I was upbeat about being in and having a mattress, at least, down within the hour.
The plans of mice and men!
The front door opened as I approached and our new landlady stumbled out, hands full of bags and with her ten-day-old baby boy strapped to her front. She appeared hot wired to Red Bull as she welcomed us, ushered us in and disappeared off to her hire van.
It wasn’t what we wanted or expected. If my heart was sinking, it crashed through the pit of my feet as I walked in and surveyed the scene. It appeared she only began to move out the second she saw our van approach. To make matters worse, her Spanish husband was lying sleeping against the living room wall; working off another boozy session in celebration at the birth of his son. Fair play, but timing’s not just everything in comedy.
How were we going to get anything in at all, never mind in an hour or so, when they hadn’t begun to move out yet? In true coping in a crisis style we managed it. My wife and I passed the landlady at the doorway of the house like ships in the night going through the Panama Canal as we shuttled between respective vans laden with our respective belongings.
Another problem was that what appeared to be meagre belongings when packed up in Scotland now appeared to be an articulated lorry full, coming from a magic lorry that never, ever empties no matter how long or fast you work to reach that goal! Relativity, eh!
However, by 2.00am the deed was done: we were in and they were out. By this time we had placed our daughter on a double mattress that was occupying the only available floor space; we crashed down beside her, more or less fully clothed, and got some much needed and well earned rest.
Relativity reared its less attractive side again as my mobile phone alarm woke me at what said 8.00am, but I was convinced I had only just shut my eyes!
Banging into boxes, walking into walls, and opening the wrong doors I washed and dressed desperately trying not to wake my nearest and dearest. I was as subtle and silent as a blind hippo on roller skates.
And so to our new life, my new start. Not a job. No, that would be too easy. Work has gone for a year and I am back at university, having sworn never to return after doing a post-graduate diploma twelve years ago.
So, no work, not much money, and almost no home – to call our own at least!
The rest of the week flew past. I skipped off to school everyday, getting to know my new classmates and teachers, and doing some work, while my wife stayed at home with our daughter and made sense of our boxes and belongings.
All the early indications are that it will be a pleasurable and quick year, for all three of us. The weekend came quicker than a belch after a fizzy drink and the week was full of positives. The students, the tutors, the college, Falmouth too, by now our home, all have a nice feel to them.
The only thing that broke the reverie was catching the news on the radio and dipping into the local paper. The former reminded me that there is a world out there struggling to come to terms with itself. The latter that Falmouth and Cornwall is not the utopia I was being lulled into believing it might be; it has its problems like anywhere else.
For my wife and I, the biggest indicator of how things will go is our daughter. She hasn’t shown any sign of missing anything from her ‘past’ life, and has been rushing about being the little miss we love and have come to know so well. The consensus, then, is that this has been the right move, at the right time, to the right place.
Amen to that!
We arrived in Falmouth around eleven o'clock at night in a hired van full of our belongings; 'we' being my wife, our daughter and, of course, myself. It was a ten hour drive from our previous home/life in Lockerbie, Scotland, including no less than six stops to allow our daughter to banish her continually mounting, and literal, cabin fever.
After we drove through the streets attempting to locate the house that was to be our new home for a year, my thoughts turned to emptying the van as quickly as possible and getting some sleep in order to be as alert as possible for my new start first thing on Monday morning.
With our little one now fast asleep across the passenger seats, and our belongings being relatively meagre, I was upbeat about being in and having a mattress, at least, down within the hour.
The plans of mice and men!
The front door opened as I approached and our new landlady stumbled out, hands full of bags and with her ten-day-old baby boy strapped to her front. She appeared hot wired to Red Bull as she welcomed us, ushered us in and disappeared off to her hire van.
It wasn’t what we wanted or expected. If my heart was sinking, it crashed through the pit of my feet as I walked in and surveyed the scene. It appeared she only began to move out the second she saw our van approach. To make matters worse, her Spanish husband was lying sleeping against the living room wall; working off another boozy session in celebration at the birth of his son. Fair play, but timing’s not just everything in comedy.
How were we going to get anything in at all, never mind in an hour or so, when they hadn’t begun to move out yet? In true coping in a crisis style we managed it. My wife and I passed the landlady at the doorway of the house like ships in the night going through the Panama Canal as we shuttled between respective vans laden with our respective belongings.
Another problem was that what appeared to be meagre belongings when packed up in Scotland now appeared to be an articulated lorry full, coming from a magic lorry that never, ever empties no matter how long or fast you work to reach that goal! Relativity, eh!
However, by 2.00am the deed was done: we were in and they were out. By this time we had placed our daughter on a double mattress that was occupying the only available floor space; we crashed down beside her, more or less fully clothed, and got some much needed and well earned rest.
Relativity reared its less attractive side again as my mobile phone alarm woke me at what said 8.00am, but I was convinced I had only just shut my eyes!
Banging into boxes, walking into walls, and opening the wrong doors I washed and dressed desperately trying not to wake my nearest and dearest. I was as subtle and silent as a blind hippo on roller skates.
And so to our new life, my new start. Not a job. No, that would be too easy. Work has gone for a year and I am back at university, having sworn never to return after doing a post-graduate diploma twelve years ago.
So, no work, not much money, and almost no home – to call our own at least!
The rest of the week flew past. I skipped off to school everyday, getting to know my new classmates and teachers, and doing some work, while my wife stayed at home with our daughter and made sense of our boxes and belongings.
All the early indications are that it will be a pleasurable and quick year, for all three of us. The weekend came quicker than a belch after a fizzy drink and the week was full of positives. The students, the tutors, the college, Falmouth too, by now our home, all have a nice feel to them.
The only thing that broke the reverie was catching the news on the radio and dipping into the local paper. The former reminded me that there is a world out there struggling to come to terms with itself. The latter that Falmouth and Cornwall is not the utopia I was being lulled into believing it might be; it has its problems like anywhere else.
For my wife and I, the biggest indicator of how things will go is our daughter. She hasn’t shown any sign of missing anything from her ‘past’ life, and has been rushing about being the little miss we love and have come to know so well. The consensus, then, is that this has been the right move, at the right time, to the right place.
Amen to that!
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