Reality Spheres

Watch this space... I wrote this during my lunch break. But now i've lost the order pad i wrote it on. Hope i didn't give it to a customer...

Temporary Lives

Till.
Usernumber.
Password.
Table Select.
Select Table.
Eye Contact.
Smile.
"Was everything ok for you?"
"Very nice thank you"
"Good, so all together then that's going to be ... £21.47 then please"
"How much!?"
"£21.47"
"£21.47!?"
"That's right sir"
"But all I had was a breakfast!"
"Yes, you had the Early Starter breakfast"
"That's not that much"
"You're right sir, the Early Starter is not that much. But you did have toast didn't you?"
"Well, yes"
"And extra hash browns"
"Yes, but surely"
"and to drink you had a hot chocolate"
"but..."
"but not just any hot chocolate either was it? It was the totally hot chocolate hot chocolate with cream and a flake was it not?"
"Yes, but surely not"
"Surely yes sir, all that combined with the Daily Fascist that you hold there in your hand comes to a grand total of £21.47"
"That's absurd”
“It’s all in the menu sir”
“It never used to be like this”
“No, it didn’t”
“Well, when did you put the prices up?”
“They, not me sir, they put the prices up annually with the new menus”
“How much money must you be making!?”
“Very little sir, I assure you”
“Well this is the last time I ever come here”
“If only it were sir”


I, and thousands like me rise at 6am every morning to smile sweetly at angry motorists in desperate need of a caffeine fix. We are some of the lowest skilled and lowest paid workers in Britain, and don’t we know it.

But of course. It’s just temporary, right?

Washes uniform.
Puts on East Enders.
Sets alarm.
Goes to sleep.

Taffy

If you have ever aimlessly sat down to watch poor television or been on a particularly uninspiring date, then you will know the feeling. The feeling of thinking “well, that’s a few hours of my life I will never get back”. Then I suggest a temporary antidote. Mitch Albom’s ‘The five people you meet in heaven’. Delightfully concise it should only claim three to four hours of your life and but I guarantee they will be rewarding. It is not a ground breaking book or one that will change your life. By the end of it people will still be dying and justice, as ever, will still be a distant dream. Yet you will feel better for a short period. One reviewer called it “a gift to the soul”. I think they are probably right.

Echoes of Empire

Like most English schmucks I can’t speak a word of any other language. This is a real shame and is highly embarrassing when we travel abroad, a habit to confront foreigners by shouting out syllables does no favours to our beef eating and arrogant stereotype.

Yet there are reasons for this. Firstly we are an island nation and like all other island nations we have a more inward looking view simply because we have less face to face contact with our neighbours (but bear in mind Britain, with its comparatively successful acceptance of immigrants, is one of the lesser xenophobic island nations (look at Japan – or perhaps even the USA)). Secondly we do not need to learn any other languages since English is the language of money. And money knows no borders, (passing socialist and fundamentalist check points with equal ease). English is the international language of business and as such we can get along just fine in the wider world without ever once bothering to consider how peculiar this actually is.

While convenient it is also shame. Without ever comparing our language to others we never become aware of the fundamental nature of linguistic structures and the bizarre relationships that man creates between sounds and what it perceives to be reality.

Ever since squandering my high school language education through a combination of individual shortsightedness, French-Canadian incompetence and the degenerate chatter of working class children I have longed to break the barrier of languages and hold my head high in a foreign country. As of yet this is a long way off and the recent developments in electronic universal translators are interesting, but sidestep all benefits of actually learning a new language. The older I get the harder this will be and I am all too aware that time is the most precious thing we have to lose.

I should get started soon. Obviously a European language would be the logical choice But which language?

Spanish means days in the sun and is a growing and dynamic country with lots of Latin American connections. French is the language of a dying race who are too busy butchering their immigrants with outdated concepts of nationality and embracing suicidal economic policies, it has even lost its academic flair in recent decades. So not French then. German is an interesting prospect. Having spent forty years feeling guilty and then the last twenty integrating their eastern cousins it finally appears to be hitting its stride once again, economic and artistic achievements will doubtlessly follow.

I’d like to see more of both before deciding.

The Broadcasting Revolution

Meet Marconi, the father of radio. He allowed millions around the world to experience a potentially limitless number of differing viewpoints and changed the course of world history forever. He was a revolutionary. He was also a Fascist.

Marconi made it possible for everyone to listen. One hundred years later and Podcasting has recently made it possible for everyone to have a voice. This is truly revolutionary stuff. Media only ever reflects the society that creates it. So I ask, what sort of society are we?

Time to get casting…

The End

I bring to you - University in 200 key words: (as seen from the eyes of an optimistic middle class male)

Trance. Adidas. Curry. Rugby. Bridges. Nietzsche. Poland. Drink. Islam. London. More London. Bush. Socialists. Arguments. Sunrise. Asimov. Bangladesh. Anti-climax. Alienation. Segregation. Pro Evo. Depression. Button. Proletariat Self-Destruction. Running. Cyprus. Norwich. Parisian. Tuna. Eight Pence Noodles. Five a side. Coco Pops. Fear. Civilisation II. Sleeplessness. Stupidity. Betrayal. Neighbours. Lust. Club Soc. Highlights. Beadnobs. Risk. Loss. Heart Break. Castle Pub. Social Discomfort. Air Hostess. Avocado. Spag Bol. Finland. Duality of the Duck. Fresher Friendships. Grace. Yankee. Materialism. Beauty. Fabric. Euro Pop. Bureaucracy. More Bureaucracy. Sociology. Thought Journal. Hermione. Mexican. Dave Matthews. The Beatles. Moisturiser. Mercedes. Fabrication. Pre Med. Disorientation. Gervais. Cruise. Moore. Kirk. Shemnue. Election. Human Rights. Koran. HS Thompson. Catholics. Domesticity. Death. Peugeot. Outlook. Flight of Angels. Ecstasy. Little Chef. Beauty. Reading Festival. Beret Girl. Humanities Horror. Atlantic. Blog. Christians. Bigotry. Racism. Community. Companionship. Malaysia. Cupid. Grubs. Hogs. Yellow Cabs. Floods. Racism. Bible. Ignorance. Crime. Halloween. Creation Myths. Chapelle. Patriotism. Break ups. Mistakes. Observations. Bolivia. Pity. Anger. Loss. RZ’s. Good Byes. High Hopes. Crushing Distances. Tiles. Granada. Inspiration. Illness. India. Britain. My Hero. Stability. Gym. Choco-Krispies. Injury. Warfare. X-Files. Blair. Major. Hicks. Thatcher. Coins. Rest. Stress. Failure. Self Loathing. Mars. Conservatives. Racism. Vonnegut. Regret. Greens. New Generations. Photos. Suits. Exhaustion. Loss.

That list is nothing how I imagined it would have been. How to conclude? I don’t think I can.

But to quote a great British film and the theme of last nights text boards…

For better or worse, it has been emotional. Sob.

Übermensch

So what happens now?

After bumbling through Europe, believing yourself ‘enlightened’ for having spent a week in Asia and once you have exhausted your accent in the States. Then we shall all return to become our mothers and fathers. To settle. To become creatures of habit. To ‘grow up’. To attain nothing but cynicism.
We might find that special someone, or more likely as our biological clocks count down into nothingness - we can forgo the special. Doomed to that inevitable disillusionment eighteen years later. Our transformative years are all but over and we are now set in our ways.
To spawn more life might reinvigorate our own but perhaps also put it into a hopeless context. Yet we will surely fight back just enough to create that hope upon which the human soul feeds. Where might we find that hope? And is to have that hope simply enough?
What good is hope if its only purpose is to prolong hopelessness? What powers do we have to change our lives? To what extent are we simply agents of history, destined only to attain significance should our biological matter be spat forth by the invisible tides that shape us?
--
Perhaps it is because I have been stripped of my educational garments and suddenly find myself naked in the eyes of the world, but for whatever reason I have recently been thinking a lot about examples of success. So what follows is a short list of my most favourite people in the world ever. They typically tend to be men and they typically have been successful in two or more relatively distinct fields and I have a special soft spot for those that have excelled in both the realms of politics/social sciences and the worlds of mathematics and science. It is tempting to include figures that were great both in the military and then later in politics, men like Wellington, Napoleon, Lincoln and Hitler. But those two worlds seem so closely linked I fear they may not rightfully qualify for my list.

So I bring to you a far from complete list of my most respected people ever:

Sir Isaac Newton, Winston Churchill, Benjamin Franklin, Richard Branson, Albert Einstein, Theodore Roosevelt, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mohammed, Leonardo Da Vinci, Henry Ford, Ronald Reagan, Josip Broz (Tito), Gandhi and lastly, but far from least – and you know it, the greatest woman that has ever lived: Margaret Thatcher.

Rising stars: Bob Geldoff, Shami Chakrabarti and Jamie Oliver.

My moneys on Jamie.