The Wayfaring Adventurer versus the Melon-sized Butterfly: Contemplating a Year Away

You can find Utica pretty much bang in the middle of New York, almost exactly at the shallowest point of the Mohawk river (or so wikipedia says, at least). The city holds a population of somewhere just over sixty-thousand people, as well as the 1993 Guinness World Record for the largest donut. Seriously. Utica has been mentioned several times in the Simpsons; several films I'd never heard of have been partially shot there. If you try and find if anyone important lives in Utica, a Google search will essentially respond with a ‘not anyone you’d know, silly Brit.’ 

Why the information? Well, because Utica also happens to be the place I’ll be spending my next year as an international student. In just over two days’ time, I’ll be blearily wandering out Newark airport with a bag filled with textbooks and ugly shirts, set to spending a while in the land where colour has one less U in it and where pants are the second thing you pull over your legs each morning.

My year away has, understandably, has been the main conversation I’ve been having of late. 

Are you all ready to go? Pretty much, I think so. 

So you've packed everything yet? No, but the David of tomorrow will be all on top of that job. 

Okay. And how are you feeling actually going away? 

That’s a good question. Say, have you watched that new Breaking Bad episode?

I’ve not figured out to reply to that ‘how are you feeling’ question yet, at least not succinctly. The truth is, when I sit back and think properly about the fact I’m shunting myself several thousand miles to the west, a whole boatload of feelings rear up in my stomach, sail the hydrochloric seas for a while before firing their cannons somewhere into my internal organs.  

There’s excitement, obviously. Taking the initiative of moving to a strange place makes me feel like some sort of wayfaring adventurer, going independent and choosing his own cereal in the morning. Though I’m actually legally becoming a child again by moving to the states, there’s a very real sense that my doing something this dramatic is the big step towards being a fully fledged man. A man who goes into sulks fairly easily and owns several water pistols, but a man regardless.

On top of that, there’s a feeling of potential that comes from the move - that anything-could-happen-ness of flying into a new place with new things. Granted, I’m more one for tea parties than keg parties, but still there’s a new backdrop to poke around in, and not just on a small scale. Utica is situated at the red star, below-

- and its position, I feel, gives an oppurtunity to head to a bunch of places during holidays or if there’s a dip in the workload that would be cost a bundle in flights otherwise. I could go to New York or DC, I can finally visit this Walmart place everyone is apparently so very keen on.

Third, last, there’s the fact I’m a bit scared. Am I allowed to say that? When I told one friend I was feeling the nerves they took my hand, but then when I told another he told me to stop being such a tool and man up. Naturally, I sulked for a bit and shot him with my water pistols. 

There’s quite a lot of fear, actually. What if I struggle with the way things are done? What if the learning jump is too big - or worse, too small, leaving me to play catch up in my final year of my degree? What if people don’t understand my accent? Most struggle in Scotland. It’s all a bit scary. I have to leave my dressing gown behind. I wasn’t lying about that excitement and sense of potential, but I have to recognise I got a lot of it from videogames and they get me to explore by sitting in the same place and wiggling my thumbs. I’m not easy-going, my DVDs are arranged alphabetically and I get close to breaking down if there are toast crumbs in the butter. Throwing myself into the unknown like this is new, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t as nerve-wracking as it is exciting. 

Still, that’s partly why the whole thing will be so good for me. The odds are the opening line of my next blog will be The first thing I did in America was get lost, and getting lost is a learning experience and therefore possibly a good thing. 

So, excitement, potential, nerves; all merging into a melon-sized butterfly that lives in my stomach and flaps about whenever somebody asks me how I’m feeling. At the same time, though, I couldn’t expect myself to be feeling anything else. I’m ready (as I’ll ever be) to get on that plane, and I know full well - if the worst that can happen is I spend a year in a room reading second-rate sci-fi - I’m going to have a good time, evil butterfly and all. Keep the irn-bru chilled, folks: I’m off for an adventure and I’ll see you in a bit. 

Oh, and nobody mess with my DVDs while I’m gone. 

Click here if you want to see my attempts to go cold turkey on my nail-biting habit,

Or, if that’s a bit too high octane for you, I review classic literature here.

Since my last post I’ve been:

Reading Dickens’ Women by Miriam Margoyles and Sonia Fraser

Reading ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

Watching Firefly/Serenity (and wishing it hadn’t taken me this long to get around to it)

My Week as a Recovering Nail-Biter

Like many addicts, I can point to a single scene as the source of my nail-biting habit. I was somewhere near four years old at the time; my main investments were in orange peel and jumping on things. I wasn’t showing any signs of being a child prodigy, then, but I did get that there was something up when I wobbled into our kitchen one evening. Dad was eyeing the back of his hand, my mother standing beside him. He was looking disappointed in himself, annoyed, like he’d stepped on scales and found out he’d packed on a small cow. 

“WhasamatterMummyandDaddy?” I said, using my best growed-up voice. 

“Well,” said my mother, looking at me between the fingers of her husband’s left hand, “Daddy’s been biting his nails again.”

“Wieseedointhat?”

“It’s not always on purpose”, Dad told me, dropping his fingers. “Daddy sometimes doesn’t realise he’s biting them when he is, see?”

Here the images flicker and my walk down memory lane comes to a brick wall. Probably, my tiny self-absorbed self said something close to “Ayeonleewanted Abiscut Notchyoorlifestory Gosh” and wandered back out the kitchen, but I can't say for sure. Regardless of what else happened, anyway, that day became the first I thought it might be a fun idea to bite down on the keratin at the end of my digits - and that wild ride has only sped up since. Fifteen years on, I chew my nails when I read, and I chew them when I write. When gaming I chew between loading times, and it'd likely be slower to take a buzz-saw to my hands after each study session. As my days as a teenager begin to dwindle (and thank goodness for that), each finger looks on its way to a party dressed as a car crash.

I’m not very proud of being part of the Nail Biting Society. It’s not part of my twitter bio. I don’t join Nail Chewing Rallies and I usually give their Facebook invitations a decided Ignore. Eating the ends of my hands is something I just tend to do. So when - fifteen years after they accidentally set me on my habit - my parents sent me the message 

“Visa appointment fixed. They take fingerprints so better stop biting nails ASAP”

I wasn’t that worried. Hey, I thought. This’ll be easy. I’m a strong kind of guy, after all. Resolve of iron. I bought myself some of that anti-biting solution along with a few packs of gum. I was travelling with friends so I had people to provide counsel and, if needed, a chastising flick on the ear. Give it a week or two, I was sure, and I’d be hand modelling for cash in my spare time. 

Sure enough, I found days one and two on the wagon (a little less crowded and easier to stay on than the gambling or alcohol equivalents) a pretty comfortable ride, though mostly because there wasn’t much to try and chow down on. For those first forty-eight hours, I went about with a kind of happy determination that the world was on my side and nothing could possibly defeat me. When I woke on day three and saw - to my horror - my nails were growing to what seemed an absurdly long length, that optimism dissipated. I felt I'd become the Wolverine's gangly second cousin at some point during the night. A small voice at the back of my mind began to slither its way forward; telling me to repent of my wandering ways and get my nails back to what to their standard stubbiness pronto. 

Regardless, I held on and decided to persevere. I am strong, I told myself. I shall not let my mind fall prey to the desires of the cuticle. My nails will soon be of fair length and my brother won’t be able to point at my fingers as a way to break the ice at gatherings. 

It’s hard to explain the allure in biting nails. At bottom, thinking about it, it’s just a nagging sort of feeling that won’t go away until you cave in. Like having to finish a drink even if you’re not thirsty ,or a bad joke that your brain won’t let go until its told. Thank goodness for the solution I had purchased, then - I’d put my fingers in my mouth and get hit with a dose of anti-nail biting solution, a taste next door to running your tongue down Sauchiehall street on a Friday night. Worse, the gum I was chewing would soak up solution and make the flavour stick around until I could find a place to spit the whole mess out.

Day six was worse than the first five piled together - the morning and afternoon were made up of driving down one of Australia's more dull, rain-specked highways with that annoying voice tagging along for the fun. Then, once we’d stopped at our motel for the evening, we were forced, in the name of hygiene, to spend time in a hokey little laundromat and watch our clothes spin themselves clean. Bored, I had to spend most of that time pacing and trying very hard to forget I had hands.

“We’re all very proud of you, David,” one of my friends said, leaving those beside us to guess for themselves what class-A substance I was recovering from. “Real proud.” I glared at him, unwrapped a fresh stick of gum. Somehow I stumbled to the end of the day digitally intact.

I crumbled on day nine. We were boarding a lengthy night-flight to Singapore and my travel buddies had somehow managed to beat the seatbelt sign to switching themselves off. I couldn’t sleep myself but I wasn’t fussed about it. I had a book, after all. And an iPod. I had one of those head-rest televisions...but, I realised (with a little jump in my seat that startled a couple of air hostesses a little way off), what I'd forgotten to bring in my hand-luggage was my nail solution. Worse, since we were headed for Singapore and very much hoping not to be flayed on arrival, all gum had been binned hours ago. If I was ever going to give up, I was beginning to realise, it was going to be right about...

Several hours later I walked through the baggage stands with ten fresh stumps where my progress had been. I was back to car-crash hands, and all the battles I’d fought that week had been thrown out the window thirty-thousand feet up. . The little nagging voice had shoved to the front of my head, wreaked havoc and, job done, had abated. 

The injury I'd done to myself in heading back to my nail biting ways went deeper than my fingers, too - it had lowered my self-confidence the same level as the guy whose girlfriend introduces him with “this is my...friend...”. I had taken on my habit, with bravado, and had lost rather easily. So much for being resolute, I thought. So much for being strong. 

Now, If I stopped the words flowing at that last paragraph, this would turn out to be a fairly depressing post. I failed, after all, and failures as a rule tend not to do very well at things. Why not write up the sequel to that high school blog or another post another game review? People laughed at those. Sometimes even in the right places. 


Well, the reason I'm sharing my failures with you, fair readership, is that I’m going to try again. The second I hit that ‘post’ button marks my attempt to get back on the straight, nicely filed path of hand hygiene and drag myself back onto the wagon. I hope it’ll work. I’d like to be able to open canned drinks again without help. That's the dream, isn't it? So, you catch me a week from now with nails looking anything like this:

Be a pal and flick my ear for me, would you? Thanks.

[No nails were harmed in the composing of this blog]

To see me self-righteously dismissing well-loved literary classics, go here,

 here I tell a slightly distasteful yet unfortunately true tale of a recent car ride.

Since my last post I've been reading:

Prince of Thorns - Mark Lawrence

The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

God Collar - Marcus Brigstocke

All Booked Up

Somewhere between tuning the keyboard towards schools, cafes and tangents the size of Norway, I’ve mentioned that I study English literature at university (the proper course title is English, Journalism & Creative Writing, but that takes a lot of effort to say). 

When I tell people what it is that I study, I can get a few different responses. There’s the Good-luck-getting-a-job face; there’s the equally probably lets-change-the-subject-before-my-insomnia-gets-cured body language. The best, rarest, reaction, though is when somebody asks if what I've been studying is any good.

If you fall into that last camp, this post is for you. Here, you’ll find a mini-review of six texts I’ve studied in the past two years - three that struck me as especially worthwhile; three I’d rather eat than reread. Just my opinions, obviously.

May your literary adventures be strong. 

I liked: Anthropology - Dan Rhodes

I’m cheating already. Why? Because I actually studied Anthropology in writing class, not literature. I know you’ll forgive me if you pick up, though. The book is a sparkling collection of flash fiction (short short stories) exploring aspects of love and relationships. 

Put like that, it kind of sounds like a gushing mess, but most of the stories Rhodes has put together are way too sharp to ever be labelled ‘gooey’. Almost all the hundred-word escapades are bizarre, too - more likely to make you go ‘aaah’ than ‘oooh’. Look down  to see what I mean.

See? Best of all, Anthropology is as cheap as they come. Buy this, you. 

I didn’t much care for: The Land of Green Plums - Herta Muller

“So”, our lecturer said at the start of our second or third ever lecture, “Has everybody almost finished the novel?” Most gave some sort of acknowledgement that they had overcome the urge to commit seppuku with their copies and had managed soldier through to the end.

“Good”, said the lecturer “Because if you can read that book, you can handle really anything else we throw at you.”

It was a good point, but what a way to give it. Honing in on the lives of characters living under Ceaușescu’s Romania, Land of Green Plums is admittedly really clever. Annoyingly, though, it’s always striving to make sure you don’t forget how clever it is. The amount of symbolism crammed into each paragraph makes it hard enough to work out the main points of the story let alone how the band of merry metaphors fit in. 

For sure, my reaction has been influenced by the fact the lecturer didn’t so much throw us in the deep end as bury us several meters under the pool. Maybe if I pick the book back up as I go further into the degree I’d enjoy it more, but for now it’s staying on the shelf to think very hard about what it’s done.

I was quite fond of: Doctor Faustus - Christopher Marlowe

A Renaissance play wherein a man sells his soul for twenty-four years of near-unlimited power. Sounds good, doesn't it? I’ll be even more blunt than that - Faustus is a text four centuries old and still manages to be more entertaining than Paranormal Activity Five will ever be.

In another blog, I talked about Faustus consuming my life as I neared exams. A month or so after that post, I saw got the chance to see the play being performed. Though I knew the whole thing back to front, Marlowe's play - or at least what we have of it - still managed to keep me rapt all the way through (apart from when the theatre decided to replace a couple of scenes with their own. That was scary for other reasons). 

The play bounces around comic and tragic as Faustus tries to come to grips with his power, the extent of that power, and how much of a role he has in his own salvation/damnation. Recommended.

I wanted to throw in the Styx: Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe

I bought this one on audiobook so I could listen to it while doing other things. I was still bored enough by the end to consider strangling myself with my earphones. 

For those who don’t know,  the novel tells the story of a man - no prizes for guessing his name - who goes and gets himself stranded on a desert island for a decade or three. I know Robinson Crusoe is considered a classic, up there with all the other behemoths of literature, but I just can’t get past how much of the book is made up of useless lists and details. They run all the way through. To me, the Sparknotes summary is actually a far more compelling read. 

And it only gets worse as the super-specific story goes on. Even after Crusoe actually manages to get himself back to mainland alive and kicking, only now with a handy sidekick/slave, Defoe keeps the monolithic paragraphs rolling for another forty pages give the ending of Lord of the Rings a run for its money in the it-should-have-ended-ages-ago competition. At the ending of the book, then, Defoe treats the reader to a thorough view of Crusoe’s bank details.

I’m not a fan.

In other news, J.M Coetzee’s ‘Foe’, a retelling of the Crusoe story with Coetzee’s own preoccupations mixed in, is well worth reading.

I prefer to most people: Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut

Many seem to think most novels can be swept into two categories. On one side we have LITERATURE, where you’ll find clever books being meaningful but rarely any fun. 

On the other hand we have literature, lower case, where you’ll have a fun ride but won’t really remember anything about it after  finishing it. The idea goes that you should read LITERATURE, but you want to read literature. LITERATURE is like being at a formal dinner; literature is like being at a barbeque.

This whole way of thinking suffers from one key disadvantage - It’s wrong, and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, on its own, is enough to blow it apart. Within a story about a WWII prisoner of war who gets abducted by aliens (what) and time-travels apathetically through his own life, the novel bats around questions of meaning, free will and heroism better than anything else I've read. 

As a novel, it’d show up to LITERATURE's formal dinner wearing shorts and a t-shirt that said ‘pull my finger’. It's fantastic.

An alternative to capital punishment would be: The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy - Jacob Burckhardt

For the third time, I’ve got to admit I’ve referenced what I’m about to talk about already in another post. Maybe I’m running out of material, maybe I’m running out of bad jokes (I know a few who’d say the well dried up on the good ones a while back, hey-hey). Still, if you’d try and read this book, you’d know Burckhardt is worth a second round.

The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy is a 19th century German work that talks about 14-16th century Italy, and, like the other two texts I’ve sent packing back to the publishers, this one - within the rather niche field that exists in - is seen as a groundbreaking piece of work. Scanning the blurb last summer, I was actually looking forward to getting stuck. That excitement lasted to maybe half-way down page four. 

It’s just really, really boring. It’s not that the words are difficult or the content is hard to swallow. It’s just dull. To give an example, selected at random:

In the great Federigo (1444-1482), whether he were a genuine Montefeltro or not, Urbino possessed a brilliant representative of the princely order. As a Condottiere he shared the political morality of soldiers of fortune, a morality of which the fault does not rest with them alone; as ruler of his little territory he adopted the plan of spending at home the money he had earned abroad, and taxing his people as lightly as possible. Of him and his two successors, Guidobaldo and Francesco Maria, we read: ’They erected buildings, furthered the cultivation of the land, lived at home, and gave employment to a large number of people: their subjects loved them.’

See? I kept catching myself rereading the same paragraph two or three times just because my brain kept flicking off.. As far as I know, I was the only one in the class who struggled to the end, but I can’t see myself picking it up again unless I’m short of kindling.

I could describe it a bit more, but instead I’m just going to give a link to a PDF version of the book (hooray, it’s in the public domain) so you can see for yourself. Bet you can't make it past page four. Go on, I dare you.

Click here if you would rather read an elaborate account of a man relieving his bladder in my presence. Nope, no joke.

Or how about some tongue-in-cheek observations of Christians, as a Christian?

If you're wondering, since my last post I’ve been reading/playing/watching:

The Shining by Stephen King 

Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming

Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson

Driven to Madness

(Or: some other half-baked pun for a story that still makes me gag a little)

(Or: some other half-baked pun for a story that will make you gag a little, all the rest of your days)

(Or: Seeing Red)

The four of us piled out the sticky, dirty air of whatever Bangkok street it was and into the taxi, with our wet fringes were clinging to our foreheads and the balls of our feet less than half a mile from crying ‘go on without us, lads!’ and crumbling to dust. Our little group looked to our driver - or, as we were near to calling him, Champion - with a mix of thankfulness and quiet awe. The man was lean, somewhere in the fifties, with a few wisps of beard straggled out from his chin under a thin nose and lips. A half-finished bottle of coke was sloshing beside snack wrappers and dustballs in the car door pockets. Our driver didn’t seem nearly as keen to study us - his left hand drummed the wheel in an annoyed getonwidit kind of way, head flicking from road to us and back to the road again.

“We’re looking to go to the grand palace?” Justin, eldest of our little band of travelers and leader by virtue of being able to navigate his way towards anything other than failure or a Big Mac, ventured. The wispy man with the annoyed gedonwidit gesture looked back, his face making it clear he didn’t understand a word of English (how dare he).

“Grand Palace?” Justin tried again. He brought out our map, then jutted a finger towards the Palace, which probably would’ve been helpful if the map looked less like a mix between a theme park guide and the Game of Thrones title sequence. It also, helpfully, didn’t speak Thai.

At first, our Champion still seemed nonplussed on where these ignorant tourists he’d picked up wanted to go. A few seconds passed, then, just as we thought he might give up and bustle us out his car, he thumbed the button on his cab meter, shrugged his shoulders slightly and set off to join the rest of the traffic.

This shrug, in retrospect, should have been thought of as a ‘massive clue’. 

At the time, we were too exhausted to really notice anything beyond a vague Ohlookthingsaremovingthatsnice feeling, watching the neon yellows and pinks of the signs and cars clashing against the grey buildings rather like a clown cartwheeling around a politician as he's in the middle of discussing tax reform. Slender trees sprinkled themselves along the kerb between shops and street-vendors. Stalls, with offers ranging from mostly-innocent to entirely obscene - including special ‘toys’ wrapped in cellophane - clustered in with each other, giving some streets an artificial, if seedy, canopy. 

‘Massive clue’ number two: the seedy stalls and shops were becoming more the standard than the exception. By the end of the ride, it seemed the guys who owned them were setting up shrines to viagra.

To our shame, it was only Justin who was beginning to wonder if things were perhaps not going as we had hoped. Under his breath - “I’m not sure he’s taking us to the Palace.” Out loud, in an awkwardly high voice, as what little hope he’d put on reserve from the earlier conversation was spilled out - “Grand Palace, yes?...yes?”

Our Champion didn’t seem too happy with our questioning him - all at once his foot punched down on the accelerator; he lifted his left hand off the wheel and slapped the flat of his wrist against the dashboard, pointing angrily to the road (which was now feeding itself under his cab rather quickly) as he started shouting, quickly and loudly ‘Grahnpalass! Yes! Grahnpalass!” His wrist did a little flick towards Justin as though brushing off a fly. “Granplass Shhh.” 

‘Massive Clue’ that our Champion might not actually be such a Champion number three: picked up on. Well, at least a little. Despite his fiery response, despite the almost definite fact that we were heading nowhere near the Granplass, none of us made any move to leave the cab. The man was our driver, after all. We were paying him. He wouldn’t, we felt sure, take us to any old place just to get a few extra Baht. 

“I think he’s taking us to the red light district,” Justin muttered out in his quiet low voice, presumably in case there was a danger the driver might suddenly have absorbed a Merriam-Webster’s.

Clue four, received.

It’s a running joke that a lot of men who come to Bangkok would have responded to “I think he’s taking us to the red light district” with “Oh, good! Which one?”. Not us: we resolved to leave the taxi as soon as the traffic was clear and our Champion/Anti-Hero had put his car back behind the sound barrier. 

Fate decreed, however, that before we got out there was to be one final, awful trial by taxi. We stopped under the traffic lights in the middle of perhaps four or five lanes of cars. Ex-Champion/Anti-Hero was finishing the last of his coke and we were discussing how best to continue our journey:

“Right,” one of us in the back said,  “he’s probably been taking us in the wrong direction, but-”
“Wrong direction? He knew exactly where he was taking us.”
“Guys...”

“-But it shouldn’t be too hard to get back on track.”

“Guys...”
“True. We can probably walk some of the way or get another cab.”
“Guys...”

“That or just take the subway-”
“Guys, he’s about to pee.”

Justin was speaking in the mutter again, barely audible. His entire face was staring, unblinking straight ahead like someone had stuck it there with an invisible vice.

Then, we heard a zipping, then a grunt. An unmistakable shloshing noise came, the sound of a recently emptied coke bottle being filled  back up.

“Oh, mercy,” said Justin. 

We could only just hear him over the sound of that shloshing and our own miserable internal wailing.

Still nowhere to stop, we four had a choice - (a) leave the car and hope the traffic lights didn’t change, or (b) shout at the man until he stopped. We opted for (c) be very British, look out the window and pretend it isn’t happening. He had been going for a good while, surely

slosh

It would have to to stop soon. We would, we thought, be

sloshh

laughing about this in ten, fifteen minutes.

After four or five seconds of the Ex-Champion/Anti-Hero/Worst Enemy emptying the Niagara into the plastic the red light flicked to green. For a wonderful second the man was forced to stop and take off the handbrake. Once he’d got the handbrake off, though, he was back to business 

(“Guys, I can’t look”
“Keep it together Justin”
“Easy for you to say you can’t see it”)

And back en route to what probably wasn’t going to be the Granpalahss.

Right to left: Justin, Michael, a sex-crazed monk we met (story for another post), Jonathan.

“Say, look at that building!” One of us in the back cried, pointing through the passenger window at a random slab of a structure, away from Ex-Champion/Anti-Hero/Worst-Enemy's side of the car. Those in the back agreed in high, appreciative sobs, then Justin took up the appreciation from the front, slapping his head to the left with a “Yes, look at that! Wow!” Meanwhile, the traffic was beginning to slow again. Our driver, without stopping - car or bladder - slanted his face to the left to see what we were all looking at. Failing to find what was animating us so (try looking down, buddy), he flicked his gaze from the scenery 

Slosh 

to Justin and 

Slosh

Stayed there. Though it came several bales after it should have, we finally reached our last straw. “We’re getting out now”, Justin said.

We waved for the driver to stop, pointed at the kerb, tried to hold it together for a little longer. Worst Enemy/Very Bad Man looked surprised. He lifted the bottle out and placed it beside the wrappers in the door pocket, lid still off and flies still unzipped. He shifted his vehicle to a closer lane. Worst- Enemy/Very Bad Man, after getting over his initial surprise that his passengers wanted out, turned a little angry. He started barking at us - we for once found ourselves very grateful for the language barrier - and screwed his face up into a scowl.

I took out a few dozen Baht, hating myself for feeling guilty. He took the money. For a brief second, our hands touched. We opened the doors and left the taxi.

 Though we’d met horror at one kind of red lights, we’d still managed to get out before the other kind really made its presence felt in any other way apart from the frequency of the questionable stalls. Still, we opted to subway our way out this side of town before taking a shower, arranging some therapy then calling our family to tell them we loved them very, very much. 

And just think. Somewhere, on the other side of the world, some innocent, tired tourists could well be piling out the sticky, dirty air of whatever Bangkok street it they’re on and into the taxi...

Oh mercy.

For a similarly written escapade concerning paying large sums of money to dance stupidly at clubs, you might want to visit this link,

Or here for my recent observations of Christians, as a Christian,

Or, if this one was all too much for you, click here to see a nice sunset.

Observing Christians

Warning - Partially Flippant

Christians are, generally unintentionally, funny - a fact often found true not in obvious cases of stupidity or in wince-some biblical puns, but rather in simple observation of the redeemed masses. The simple, everyday quirks of the average Christian are more colourful and undeniably funny than a preacher doing a one-man reenactment of Jesus Christ Superstar. On rollerskates.

With this in mind, I present to you some of the more bizarre tendencies of, as well as a few tips for, the average Christian (most points are things the writer has caught himself doing, and all can be read faster than your child usually says Grace).

(1) If the original Greek or Hebrew is made reference to in a sermon, it means (a) the point of the passage is made more clear by explaining a specific word (b) the preacher is pandering for time.

(2) Inter-faith dialogue always seems like a good idea until it turns out that the other person knows more than you.

(3) Children's talks are rarely only beneficial for children.

(4) Psalms should only be sung by those who have a tune in mind before they begin to sing.

(5) Many Christians harbour the suspicion their life would be a lot easier if Jesus had actually said 'love your enemies, apart from that one guy. Man, he's such a jerk.'

(6) It's often possible to identify the worship song coming next from the prayer beforehand ('And help us remember, Lord, that our God is an awesome God. That's you. You're an awesome God. Amen.)

(7) Friendships between denominations usually operate around the unspoken premise You're family in Christ so I'm willing to overlook the fact that you're very, very wrong.

(8) It is widely known a Spurgeon quote a day keeps those heretics at bay.

(9) Not everything should be attributed to spiritual warfare. There are probably no angels and demons playing tug-of-war with your lost scarf.

(10) 'Is Justin Bieber really a Christian?' Should not be one's most pressing theological question.

(11) 'Bible-based fun' often amounts to 'Hour-long lecture'.

(12) Ten years later, many Christians are still struggling to let go of Bruce Almighty as a source of conversation in youth groups.

(13) Tea and biscuits are the staple diet of every church member.

(14) Everyone secretly enjoys the tense standoffs that arise when two people begin to pray simultaneously.

(15) Occasionally, Baptists dance.

(16) Many pious deem 'How can I pray for you?' as a substitute for 'What's the gossip?'

(17) Struggling to bring in the youth to your event? Bring snacks.

(18) The affirming hum Christians make in response the prayers of others is actually a well-honed, delicate art, said by some to be passed down by the apostle Paul himself.

(19) Make sure you know your audience well enough before shouting a triumphant 'can I get an amen?' 

(20) When a typo appears in the hymn lyrics, all those singing undergo a fierce inner debate whether they should sing the error or the actual word. 

(21) Bible-based cartoons and films are always entertaining for nearly always the wrong reasons.

(22) The sentence 'Oh, you're a Christian are you?' doesn't necessarily imply 'please, let me help you evangelise to this oncoming Land Rover'.

(23) If someone opens a conversation by addressing you as Brother/Sister expect an intensive  loving rebuke to be inbound.

(24) One mistruth is continually told in churches across the world: 'no-one's watching you worship anyway.'

(25) In a sermon, the use of the phrase 'one last point' is usually code for 'I hope you brought a packed lunch to this gig'.

(26) When the preacher says 

'if you feel like the Spirit is speaking to you personally through tonight's message, raise your hand',

you will often find yourself fighting the urge to scratch your right ear.

(27) It's disrespectful to watch the congregation member getting frustrated that their final drop of communion has, once again, evaded their tongue and has decided to remain camped out in the glass.

(28) It's disrespectful to watch them, but they're always there.

(29) "It is known that name-dropping and quoting Church Fathers will boost your sanctification levels to somewhere around Augustine's" - Tertullian 

(30) When an awful worship lead says "And we'll get to spend an eternity in heaven like this!" it's within the bounds of orthodoxy to wonder if he hasn't got heaven mixed up with that other place.

Time to Summer Down

The funny thing about Summer is that it seems to be the Best Thing Ever(TM) a week before it kicks off. When students are (ideally) funnelling their waking hours into past papers, staring at lecture notes or wondering wistfully if Armageddon has been pencilled in for anytime soon, scores of hours of free time seem like the best thing since people stopped saying YOLO. And, to start, it is, even if you don’t do much. There's a lot to commend days that revolve around C-List Youtube videos and the eternal question how late does it have to be before breakfast is really lunch?

Such stretches of nothingness, however, can begin to grate - even if you’ve got a fairly busy social schedule these kinds of days can stack up on each other quickly and do weird things to your mind. Personally, so much time spent in purposeless isolation can cause my tolerance levels to drop faster than the fan base of Heroes. During summer, pet hates balloon into mortal sins; little quirks of everyday living become unforgivable slights. 

Think I’m kidding? Here are three quick examples of holiday-specific aggravations.

(1) Fun-sized snack bars

Now this is more like fun-sized.

‘Good things come in small packages’ is what we’re told, usually at Christmas by someone who thinks you’ll be made made whole by another pocket sized Filofax. 

Sometimes the cliche is true - when I’m sent a document to proofread and end up after two hours drowsily blinking through eyelashes that feel sealed with wax, small is definitely better. When Samwise Gamgee is getting hitched to a nice lady-hobbit after all drama in the film ended half an hour ago, less is more. When someone asks how you’re doing, they don’t want to hear anything longer than ‘Pretty good. You?’.

Not always, though, is the smaller superior. Imagine: I’m rummaging in the cupboards for a snack. My fingers clasp around the thin wrapper of something that feels deliciously fattening. I pull my hand out of the cupboard and (to my unimaginable horror) see that the chocolate bar is small enough to make my thumb feel like a Titan amongst mortals. 

Such an event would be upsetting yet forgivable had the designers of the packet not had the evil within their hearts to tauntingly label the food ‘Fun-sized’.  Fun-sized! Is anyone actually persuaded by this move? Is there anyone with the capacity to read who looks at the fictitious adjective and exclaims “Oh, score! I thought I was having a plain old Mars Bar but I guess today’s my lucky day!” Hardly. 

Though I understand slapping “The Over-Compensating Snack” on the wrapper instead might not sell as well, I reserve the right to be mildly irritated.

Some Cola out in plain view. Rookie mistake.

(2) Refrigerator Hide and Seek

Say for the sake of argument that after some smashed windows and flipped tables, you’ve regained your cool. You’ve gone to the shops, bought some honest consumables and, now home, are in need of some fridge space to store the things that need cooling. Not so fast! You’ve forgotten that the fridge is the preferred hunting ground of that ignoble species: The Family. 

What’s that, you say? You’ve written your name on your purchases? Words can be easily overlooked in the face of hunger. 

What’s that? Parents wouldn’t take take your things without checking? Ah, you forget the “We’ve been feeding you your whole life anyway” response, the ultimate shut-down and worst possible afterward to all apologies. 

No, young novice. Best hide your purchase behind something less appetising - say that cabbage that decides being green is too mainstream - and avoid the tastebuds of Sauron sweeping over and devouring your property. 

Refrigerator Hide and Seek: saving over 50,000 cakes per annum. Thank me later.

What’s that? There’s a sandwich already stashed behind that cabbage? Dibs.

(3) Gratuitous Nicety

Now, it’s pleasant when you’re trying to turn onto a busy road and some other driver decides to decelerate a bit to let you in. This is actually called by some ‘being nice’. When the same road holds only one person and (s)he still drops twenty miles an hour to let you in first, this is ‘being unnecessary and a bit strange’.

If I’m walking through someplace with my rucksack open and someone taps my shoulder and points this fact out to me, I appreciate the concern and thank the stranger. If I drop a pen and that same person from miles away charges forward to pick it up for me, I wonder if they are trying to be kind or if the makers of Cluedo could have been a bit more comprehensive in their identification of weaponry.

When an aquaintance gets you a present and the tag reads ‘Happy Birthday, Melvin!’, it shows they care. If your name's Melvin, anyway. When a friend gets you a present and the tag says ‘Happy Monday! (present one of seven)', you might have to set set your social media to appear offline for a few years.

At this point, belief in the essential goodness of humanity being slowly drained with every sentence, you hold your head in your hands and wonder how somebody could get annoyed at such triviality. “Maybe”, you say, “He can get along on a day to day basis without being such a grump?”

Maybe.

Then again,

Probably not.

Things High School Taught Me, Part one: A Waist of Time

Back in March, I uploaded a quick list of things I’d learnt in my Primary school years that hadn’t managed to make it to the official syllabus. The post was fairly well received. Not in the usual X-Factor ‘I’m know I’m good at singing because my friends and family tell me I am’ sort of way, either. 

In the weeks following the post’s online life, I’ve been asked by some to write a sequel about my years in secondary education. To start, I wasn’t all that keen to do so - partly because I found high school rather an unpleasant period, and mostly because my alter-ego at that time would have to have been named Bland-Man or something along those lines. I had at that time of life, for example, a favourite vegetable; I had an unhealthy obsession with my Runescape persona (purely platonic, you understand); phrases like ‘outside world’ would all too easily strike fear into my innermost being.

As time has frittered away in the past month or two, however, I’ve found myself caught up in snippets of memories and quirks of my time at secondary school that hopefully merit a strongish post. Sit down, then, relax, never say the word ‘chillax’ in my presence, and enjoy part one of Things High School Taught Me.

Lesson one: Johnny B. Goode has been ruined by overzealous PE Teachers

Each year, between the annual downpour of sleet and the hallowed Christmas break, there existed a stint of several weeks where ‘Physical Education’, a grueling class that showcased my failings and flailings at sport, was swapped out for ‘social dancing’: a grueling class that showcased my failings and flailings at dancing with members of the opposite sex.

Every week, the classes would be marched into the games hall and the genders would establish themselves at either side of the room. Only the most beautiful and confident of souls would ever strut across the no-mans-land for a chat, while those at the other side of the social spectrum would watch these human peacocks and very much miss our virtual crossbows. Most, somewhere in between the extremes, stuck to their side waiting (perhaps a little nervously) for the teacher to bellow ‘Choose your partners!’ like some kind of failed gameshow host and, only then, venture across as a team.

If I had to choose one part of my whole social dancing career I really did enjoy, it was this ‘choosing of the partners’, which involved the entire group of puberty-suffering youngsters trying to toe the line between scoring the person they wanted to lock hands with while still pretending not to care about anything much, ever. Such a ritual usually includes deliberately positioning yourself within a ten-foot radius of your target; absent-mindedly/deliberately catching their eyes, then asking if they would like to double up - normally with as few words as possible:

“Want to dance with me?”

“Hi. Partners?”

“You?”

As time went on, actually, these lines of questions became an increasingly honed art - by our fifth year all it took was an eyebrow twitch and you had three weeks’s worth of dancing and a prom date all lined up. 

After maybe a minute or so, ninety percent of the student body would be coupled and lined around the perimeter; the final ten percent were assigned a partner (though by their faces they may as well have been asked to read out a stack of ‘yo’ momma’ jokes to a firing squad), and one way or another I’d be facing a girl in my year and fighting the urge to apologise in advance. 

Now came the dancing itself: a terrifying prospect filled with all kinds of woe. For one, where was I supposed to look? Should I have watched my shoes? Should I have kept my neck snapped away or stared straight into her eyes as like I was about to whisper “and what became of your lamb, Clarice”? Usually, I ended up flicking between them all in three or four seconds like the star of a low-budget sequel to the Exorcist.

Another obstacle for the 13-year-old myself was the business of placing my hand round the girl’s waist - a move that at the time seemed next door to impregnation. I had no desire to become one of those underage fathers you read about on the news and so I always panicked, placing a closed fist on my dancing partner's side instead. 

Worst of all, these kinds of problems usually went by unanswered and piled up on each other. Doing my best to look like I was enjoying myself, attached to my peer by a single pair of joined hands and a few knuckles, I’d spend most periods of social dancing snapping my neck to the side, down to my shoes and then straight into my partner’s soul; all the while pondering why people were so anxious for Johnny B. Goode to go away in the first place. 

To this day, my favourite part of a ceilidh is when the nibbles come out.

Lesson two: Every pupil has their own ongoing skirmish with the office

You may recall that my primary school post featured a faction of pre-pubescent midgets joining forces to meet a shared goal, namely, the acquisition of the hallowed Hill. A high schooler’s War with the Office is generally of a different sort - each student is forced to carry his/her fight and shoulder his/her burdens by him/herself.

I have to admit that my personal conflict with the school office was kicked off by (A) my desire for a temporarily free lunch and (B) my tending to thrust all my problems on a future version of myself. At least twice a week for a large part of my second year I’d treat the room beside the school entrance as half office, half bank and ask the increasingly irritated woman at the window for a lunch slip intended for who’d forgotten their lunch money, and not for those who’d blown theirs on Jaffacakes the day before. 

I would always uncategorically swear to pay my debts the next day, though was fascinated by how ‘next day’ and ‘next wednesday’ could be so easily conflated.

After several months of taking advantage of the school in such a way, I realised my system wasn’t the most selfless of actions. Repentant, I turned over a new leaf, paid my dues and began to buy my lunch like any other. I thought, insodoing, I’d stopped any conflict with the office before it had started. I was rather surprised, then, when one morning I showed up with a single note to pay two seperate (and not lunch-caused) fees. Apparently, this was a heinous sin and very much not to be done. Instead of asking me to come back the next day with two seperate payments, the lady’s face in front of me puckered into a giggle before she turned to a colleague still at her desk. 

“Hey, guess what?”

“What?”

“This boy” - I would have preferred student, pupil, gentleman, but I let it pass - “wants to pay for two things with one note!” 

Said colleague shook her head back and forth and began to chortle.

“We don’t do that”, she said.
“We don’t do that.” The woman at the window said, turning back to me, shaking her head and still snickering.

Maybe it was a running joke on that side of the glass, but if there was it was lost to me. Embarrassed, bewildered, and having not yet fully understood the concept of ‘turn the other cheek’, I fled back to class and prepared myself for the next round of war.

To be continued, etc, etc.

If you want to see the original primary school post, go here.

If you want to read about my long-winded day out in London, go here.

If you are interested in acquiring a black belt in the ways of the dish towel, go here.