Category
Reflections
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09.06.02BeyondWith a bad headache and a new sofa to contend with, last night I switched off the computer and dealt with other things.Let me share this with you, friends, because you may not already be aware....There is a whole world beyond the cathode ray tube. Yes! I know! Incredible! There are real people to interact with - like, at the same time and right in front of you and everything! Plus there's, like, fresh air and outdoors and books and stuff. There's even this marvellous invention called - wait for it, you'll love this - "bed" where you get to ...
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09.05.02Everything StopsYou know, one of the things I like about being English is that there is practically no situation in which a cup of tea is inappropriate. A cup of tea helps just about anything, from relaxing and winding down, to sorting out a hangover or headache, or just helping to think things through.Feeling a little down? Have a cuppa. Tired and stressed? Time to brew up. Upset or in need of soothing? Pop the kettle on.It's refreshing to have a cure-all wonder-drug that doesn't cost the earth or have dodgy side-effects (except maybe making you pee like a racehorse). Tangent: I ...
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08.26.02New RulesWhen you are unable to sleep in because of prior commitments (work, travel, appointment) you will snooze through the alarm. When you are perfectly able to sleep in (Bank Holiday, Sunday, unemployed), you will either a) wake at your normal time and be unable to sleep again (see boyfriend)b) wake up inexplicably three minutes before your alarm usually goes off and get sleepily confused about what day it is orc) be disturbed from slumber by someone outside shouting, or hammering, or digging up the road, or doing whatever people are possessed by doing on a Bank Holiday. If you do a big ...
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08.08.02VertigoI was just looking at a picture of a busy La Paz street, and that got me thinking about Bolivia. Just thinking about it, remembering the smells, the noise, the thin air and sharp sun, made my heart speed up, my knees give slightly, even sitting here in my desk chair. Lightheaded at the memory of being there.
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08.01.02The CrackI remember the exact moment when the world cracked. We'd been drinking over at a friend's house in Cochabamba for a whole long, hot afternoon. Rum and orange juice on a rooftop, with the gentle hum of the market four stories below, an unrelenting sun, little shade and the ice melting quickly in our glasses. After a few hours, our heads started to throb with sun and rum, and we decided to seek shelter in the only air-conditioned place in town: the cinema.Walking through the town centre towards the cinema, the sun was hot on my head, and the paving ...
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07.23.02Dropping the towelI was talking to someone the other day about dropping the towel, and I can't remember who it was. They told me an apocryphal but appealing story. Here it is:Two people hold opposite ends of a towel, and pull. The towel is tight between them. But when one person lets go, the towel falls limp.The towel is a metaphor for a fight. When both sides hold on to it, it stays in the air, taught. When one person chooses to let it drop, there's no longer a fight, just one angry person holding a towel. Maybe I dreamt it. Maybe ...
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07.22.02Maybe it’s big-horse I’m a LondonerI realised yesterday that I have spent most of my life in London, from toddlerhood to 16, then from 24 until now. For the first three years of that eight year gap, while I was living in Canada, Scotland, Liverpool, Scotland again, Spain, Bolivia, more Scotland, Liverpool again, Manchester and elsewhere, London remained the family base. And not just London in general, either - specific bits, corralled into the west and slightly north, bordered by the Cromwell Road, Finchley Road, East Acton and Golder's Green. Since I returned independently to the city after years away, and after my family had ...
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07.09.02Say CheeseCal published a photo from the weekend in which I am on the phone to my sister. My eyes are closed, and I am gesticulating. Caught in mid speech, I look scarily like my mother. My mum cannot have her picture taken without talking, or waving her arms about. I think it's a nerves thing. As soon as you point a camera in her direction, she starts speaking and gesticulating, saying, "oh, what do you want me to do?" or "ok, I'm waiting," or "oh no, I feel silly, just hurry up and take it." Consequently, in every photo of her ...
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06.22.02Not at the reunionA little over 7,700km away from where I sit writing this, a hundred people are gathering under tall trees for my college ten year reunion. I am not there. It's weird. Ten years ago (well, twelve if we include the years at PC) each of us at college reserved a little chunk of mind space for wondering what we'd be doing by the time the ten year reunion swung around - we knew about it even when we were attending, and we relished the thought of such a distant, exotic future point. The Ten Year Reunion. It morphed into this gigantic, intangible ...
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03.06.02No ApologiesInteresting: No Apologies for Existing: "Respect of other realities, and respect of our own. That's all it is. It doesn't require love. It doesn't require hate. None of us are quite in the same world by default. We pay our own consequences and try to shape our own dreams. We can think of whatever we want on the inside, but should always remember to play well with others on the outside or take the consequences when we do not. Our duties are not to the streamlining of other lives, but to the creation of as wonderful a construct as we can ...
