My desk.

Pinata!

so much to write, so little time, so it seems, so it is. Like so many other people, I am not entirely in control of my time management, and so I allow little jobs to slide until they end up as one colossal bloody mountain of sodding little jobs, and there's me at the base wondering what to do. Perhaps I should take a leaf out of my friend Marcus' book, or rather blog: The enlightened path may not lay at the top of the mound, but rather by walking round the side of it. Hopefully with a nice cup of tea to hand.
I find myself bogged down at present, having to juggle the various needs and desires of not only myself but also others. Sometimes it is frustrating: However, it is my life as it is. I'm well aware that I don't earn enough money, and that doing my Dip is the only current way forward, yet I still wonder whether I am on the right path, and whether I should be moving into something else. I want to study, I want to write, yet I seem to not have enough time for either.Perhaps I should walk around the mountain.
On a different topic, I've had quite a few reactions to the whole Jesus Pinata thing. Most agree with what I said at the end of the post, ie a sick stupid idea, yet it later struck me that theologically speaking it was actually appropriate, as long as it was done on Good Friday. The act of striking a Jesus Pinata until it breaks (spilling communion wafers and wine?) would be hugely symbolic of the mockery, abuse and pain heaped upon Christ in his final few hours, and therefore apt. I formed this opinion while watching BBC/HBO's hugely impressive 'The Passion', which didn't shirk from showing what a miserable, vile and humiliating death crucifixtion was, while not lingering on the thing with the sadistic pleasure evinced by Mel Gibson's film. However, the actor playing Jesus looked a bit too much like Ben Fogle with a beard to be entirely convincing.

Easter

..and chocolate and bunnies. Yum. I was discussing it rather flippantly with a colleague the other day, and wondered why we didn't have any lo-calorie chocolate Jesuses. They'd go down a treat. And what about a Jesus Pinata? All the kids could dress up as roman soldiers and poke it with spears.
Yes, I know, deeply sick.

Dear fellow cyclist...

,yes I think you know who you are, and I hope you're reading. You overtook me on Hemdean road this morning, almost pushing me into the kerb, and disregarding your own safety vis a vis the car directly behind you. There you were, you hero, straining against the wind, your work suit bulging against your paunch and the hi-vis, expensive yellow cycling jacket; you wobbled under the weight of your pricey cycling rucksack and your head bowed under your pricey cycling helmet; And yes, you overtook me,regardless of anyone's safety, least of all your own, you hero, you. Well, the wind was against us, and just for a bit of sport, I thought I'd catch you up and see if I could beat you to the end of the road. And I did, didn't I? However, you didn't like that, did you?It showed you up on your pricey bike and pricey clothes and pricey kit, you hero. So, when I cycled onto Church street, you came racing behind, regardless of the car bearing down on you, hero, its horn blaring. I guess your piggy little eyes were bulging with fury behind your pricey little glasses. And of course, when I reached the mini roundabout, I indicated right, as I always do, but it's a good job I checked behind me, as I always do before I turned right, because I saw you just about to barrel into me in your yearning to get past me, regardless of the car about to turn into your path, you hero. So I hope you're reading this:
YOU ARE A TOTAL FUCKING TOOL, AND IT'S NO WONDER PEOPLE GET PISSED OFF WITH CYCLISTS WHILE ARSEHOLES LIKE YOU ARE AROUND.
Thank you.

the last post was horribly pessimistic. Blame it on reading too much James Lovelock, watching the news unfold about price increases, the threat of recession, and being 40.

Do you know what you're doing?

No, really. Do you really, truly know and understand exactly what you're doing and why? Or is your life just little pockets of control, pushed and whipped around by great storms of total bloody chaos? Now there's a question that I'd like to see a politician answer with a straight face and an honest heart. The fact of the matter is, very few people really know what they're up to. The rest of us just try to control what we can, and are at the mercy of the shitstorm that is life. We might delude ourselves that we're in control, that we are masters of our destiny, but by and large that's bollocks. Yes, we might have the luxury of choosing where we live and what jobs we do: Yes, we have the freedom to have leisure time, go on holiday, buy what we want: But it is controlled choice, limited freedom. The slightest thing could send our lives spiralling out of control.
And of course, we expect those in charge to be able to control things in order to make our own lives easier, to give us a little less to be concerned about. What we neglect, or even choose to ignore, is that these are people just like us, not some race of ubermensch. And as such, they are prone to the faults and follies, mistakes, prevarications and lies that we all are. And these are the people I'd like to grab gently by the throat, stare into their eyes, and ask the question at the top of the page until I see fear gathering in their faces.

quote of the day.

From my son, Angus:
'Dad, you and mum aren't friends, you're husband and wife!'

Old fartdom beckoning?

well, my hair hasn't fallen out overnight, nor my teeth. The Beige Gene - the one that makes you start thinking, 'actually, beige is nice' - hasn't kicked in. I haven't developed a predilection for jackets with leather patches or slippers in a plaid pattern, nor have I developed a yearning for a sports car, golf, or polo-necked sweaters in a diamond pattern. In fact, it's all pretty normal so far.
Happy 40th birthday, me.

marinading.

Home remedies can be a wonderful thing, inasmuch as they show the triumph of hope over cruel reality. For example, my wife has been applying a mixture of almond oil, olive oil, garlic and onions to my head for the past few weeks, because, apparently, it will strengthen my hair, make it more lustrous, and aid new hair growth. I have gone along with this, even though I'm sceptical. I'm being made even more sceptical by the fact that my head smells like a garlicky marinade, and has done for several days despite regular washing. And why all this? well, it's because I'm losing my hair by degrees, and my wife wants to help me keep as much of it as possible, as long as possible, and as coloured as possible, even if it means having to smell like something you'd smear over a leg of lamb and leave in the fridge overnight. It doesn't matter if I go on about telomeres, genetic inheritance, the loss of melanin, the gradually increasing friability of hair once the cell begins to die - 'try this, it'll help'. And because I'm a bit on the vain side, I go along with it, even though I know that it won't work. I don't think I'm alone in this. Having to face up to the, er, bare fact of the balding process is one of those things most men have to go through - the knowledge that one's youth is passing and gone, stupid evanescent thing. Yet still we try to avoid it for as long as possible. It's not that my hair loss is that bad: compared to my dad and grandfather, I actually still have hair, and it's mostly the original colour: No, it's the fact that it is ongoing.
The situation bears a similarity with the inevitable fact of death, the occurence of one's own, that is. The only consolation of my demise will be that I won't smell of onions. Hopefully.

A few more pics

These are from 1987 (21 years ago! How is that possible? there are people at my uni now on the verge of graduating who weren't even born when I first started boozing it up there), taken in the Mandela Bar and outside one of the entrances to the Main building. the former are of Michelle Shocked, a folk and protest singer of the time, and still among the very best gigs I have ever been to, and the latter of a very bored John Webb picketing the massed hordes of students trying to get to a 9.30 lecture. These pictures are all very typical of their time.

back in the saddle

I finally got back in the saddle today, after seven weeks. My arm's now feeling a bit sore for it, but it was good to ride again, even when I had a sudden wobble and thought I was about to go over again. I took it easy, riding by the river to work and giving myself half an hour for what would normally be a 15-20 minute journey across town. Whether I'll do it again tomorrow remains to be seen.
The feeling of mellowness engendered by the gentle release of endorphins into my bloodstream due to exercise was then completely buggered over by the discovery that my external HDD had been nuked my the computer in the classroom. I arrived home, plugged it in, and found it wouldn't work - 'the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable'. This is a bit of a bugger, as I haven't got a backup of it. Cue grinding of teeth, attempted hacking, a brief interlude to smack my head against a wall, then downloading of a file recovery program, which is now running oh-so-slowly on the main tower. I just hope I can save my info.
Nevertheless, even if it is lost, I'll be able to recover the majority of it from here and there, I think, and build it slowly back up again, datum by datum. After all, it's just another way of getting back in one's saddle, of taking control again, getting back in the (not always) right direction.

Nothing.

A somewhat hectic day halfway done....I've had to cover someone's group this morning, and now I've got four solid hours' of teaching to go. Whoopy-do. I'm also not really in a mood to scrawl anything, but feel I should make a more concerted effort than I have been doing recently. Anyway, I have three minutes before the start of my lesson, so I thought I'd take a leaf out of mys sister's blog and write frantically and not necessarily accurately over the space of a couple of minutes.
So, er, what should I write? well, there's the usual domestic stuff and, in exciting news, I put up a load of shelves yesterday. My arm continues its progress back to health, although I still can't bend it completely and the bicep looks distinctly wimpy compared to my other arm. Right, that's three minutes and nothing written - bye!

3 lives lived.

Pepys said that a diarist lives three times: once when he lives it, again as he writes it down, then once more as he looks back at his work, many years after. Of course, it should be noted that in fact he is living three different lives, in a way: the life as it lived, the life as it is recalled and seen through the glasses of reflection and opinion, and the life as it is recalled and (mis-) remembered.
Something similar happens with photos. Certainly, I'm experienced the third life currently, as I am digitising the thousands of negatives I have hoarded away from my university years and later. I recall, as photography editor for the student magazine, thinking I was a pretty damn good shot with a camera, and looking at the results once they were back from the developer ( a tiny specialist photo shop in the wrong end of Bangor High Street), that what I'd taken were damn good pics.
It is only with the hindsight of many years that I can see how crap a lot of them were. underexposure, overexposure, fogging, out-of-focus crap, pretentious, sub-Athena poster posed stuff - all there. But amidst the dross, jewels: a wonderful set of pics from a Michelle Shocked gig; a lovely shot of someone looking out, byond the frame, onto what I recall was a garden full of snow; shots of friends from the 92 Reading festival; and more.
It's going to take me absolutely ages to trawl through and sift out the best shots, and I'll be putting some of the best on here. Here's a few to be going on with, including one of my most favourite shots ever, Cara Greczyn looking distinctly annoyed while holding a water pistol.

My arm makes steady progress towards normality, but getting it moving again has been like trying to relearn the grammar of another language, one that I should be familiar with, but I can only wield partially. I'm discovering the bend and flex of each muscle and sinew, the turn of the radius as it slides past the ulna, a pair of dancers locked in a limited waltz. I find that by pushing each part just a little more each day, the whole of the arm seems to be coming slowly back to life and lithe. Who'd have thought it would be so difficult to blow one's nose, when you can't get one hand close enough? Or how uncomfortable it is to sleep when you cannot tuck your arm into a supine position?

Wrath and judgement.

'You seem very angry about things,' said my mate at Christmas. 'You know, it's counterproductive, and reserving your anger like this...'
'and being so..so generalising,' chipped in his wife.
'..it doesn't help you.'
I may have come across as a bit annoyed: after all, I'd just narrowly avoided having had my head crushed under the wheels of one big Anxious Mummy Child Carrying Juggernaut, shortly after coming off my bike and suffering a radial head fracture thanks to the AMCCJ braking suddenly in front of me. However, it was my usual joking rant, the use of apparent anger for humour's sake, my way of winding down. Unfortunately, it seems to have come across as the real thing. The question is: Am I really governed by anger, and do I generalise?
I have to ask this question, simply because the positing of the idea by another requires me to see whether it is true. On the charge of anger, I am afraid to say that there is some truth in the matter: On the latter, I absolutely refute it. I do not generalise, except for humour's sake. OK, I've written on here about my dislike of Audi, Volvo and BMW drivers, but I hope that it's fairly obvious that I'm writing with my tongue at least partially in my cheek. Generalisations are the refuge of those who are too lazy to think. While people tend to behave in broadly similar ways - for example, in my experience as a cyclist, Audi drivers behave as though the roads belong to them - nevertheless, we are all individuals with our own definitions of normal, and our own eccentricities, foibles and madnesses. I am well aware of this, and so seek to avoid making vapid, broad assumptions of others. Apart from being lazy thinking, it is also dangerous: how easy the fall from generalising to stereotyping to labelling to accusing.
On the point about anger: well, yes. I have my moments, I can't deny that. Indeed, many of the stupid things I have done in my life have been fuelled by a moment, or moments, of anger and irritation. Anger can be constructive, though, if it is directed and leads to positive change. Unfortunately, mine tends to be aimed at myself, whenever it is directed. Yet this, too, is something I am aware of, and something that I strive to change.

Back to basics. And Raki

A different week and better health. The fluey thing lifted faster than I hoped, and the visit to the Fracture Clinic went well: The consultant said to take off the sling and exercise my arm, although, because of the nature of the break, I may never be able to hold it completely straight again.

Anyway, several things have conspired to remind me of the original purpose of this blog, which was to talk about raki, recipes, booze, food, politics, and the odd rant. And raki. Also, a comment on Marcus' blog about the simplicity required to follow the teachings of the Buddha, and an article about mindfulness, got my attention. So, what I am trying to do is a) get this blog back something more direct and b) ensure I write it regularly and mindfully. At least, I think that's the idea.

So, what could be more back to basics than this?
Take two glasses, tall and narrow and preferably taken from the fridge. Take a jug of chilled spring water, a bucket of ice, and then a bottle of raki, preferably cold, preferably Tekirdag. Pour a generous measure of raki into one glass: Add ice, then add water, abd watch as it becomes a pearly white liquid. Fill the other glass with cold water and ice, and see condensation forming almost immediately on the outside: Now, add a plate of white cheese, a platter of sweet watermelon, some sigara boregi, haydari, acili ezme and patlican ezmesi, plus perhaps some leblebi, all to be followed by freshly-caught sea bass or bluefish, fried and served with rocket and lemon, or a plate of kofte and rice. On top of this, have an outdoor setting on a warm evening, overlooking the Bosphorus or the Bay of Izmir, and someone playing the saz and singing songs full of huzun:Now take a bite of one of the things laid before you, then a sip of raki, and tell me that it doesn't get much better than this.
And keep drinking till the angels start singing to you.

I love January.

This is getting ridiculous. If having my arm hurting wasn't enough, the rest of my body has now decided to join in the achy action, and I've got myself a dose of this bloody flu thing going round. I narrowly avoided throwing up in front of, not to say over, my students this morning - hardly a good way to welcome them back. By midday, I had to concede defeat, and dragged myself home, only to find that everyone else is also in varying states of unwellness.

Indolence.

You would think that, being confined at home with my knackered arm, I would be getting on with something productive: reading books, studying, doing research and so forth. But no: I seem to be all clogged up, unable to spring anything forth, do anything of any value at all. Indeed, I've been staring at this bloody computer screen for the past two days, unable even to work up the strength to think of something to write.
Indolence has this effect on me. Once it sets in, inertia follows, then I get nothing done whatsoever. And once that happens, I start feeling depressed at my own inability to move. However, one benefit of this enforced break is reflecting on the fact that movement, action of itself is actually pretty valueless. There needs to be a point to getting something done, and I should know: I'm a master of displacement activities. I've been reflecting on how much time it is possible to waste, even while doing an impression of a blue-arsed fly, and the fact that pointless work is as much a product of indolence as sitting in front of the TV.

not a resolution.

Seeing as my posting became somewhat remiss last year, I'm going to try and keep it more regular in 2008, even if it goes to the point of tedium.