Saturday 4 January 2014

Wild Nights and Football Chants


Greetings. Its been a little while since I took the time to write on these pages. I don't know if those fine souls who stumbled this way over the years and read my posts have been missing me, but if so, I apologise. What to say? Life. Downs and Ups. Maybe one day i'll tell you the tale of how I came to be a 30 year old social scientist living in North Moulescoombe. One day-but not today...

I suppose the big news is my thesis is submitted, after a last heroic lunge for the finish line back in August. And inevitably, things look different. During the slog itself, it was like pulling teeth: stress and much flailing around, doubts even to its value. After the deadline, and I'm thinking about doing some more. Weird. Just goes to show that ones perspective is often quite narrow.
Christmas came and went. I took the coach up to my mum's place in leicestershire, along with 20-or-so other last minuters, on Christmas Eve. It was a good few days, of being-with and not-doing, of roving out across muddy fields, playing silly games. This time of year has power, despite the wheelbarrowloads of commerce and distraction we've put on it. A time for families, and therefore these days of migration, of returning home, to find the 'safe harbour' as always suddenly slightly different. This time it was the street lights. The council has taken to switching them off (or at least some) to save energy. I didn't notice it at first, until I nearly ran into a bollard during a late night stroll. 'Bollards!' I cried. Anyway, the drop in light pollution gave the starlight a brightness I only remember seeing last in West Africa, as I sat on the bench outside the old house looking up on Christmas Eve, feeling a bit like one of the Wise Men in the story, sans frankincense or indeed, an excess of wisdom.

Now I'm here in Brighton again, back at the grind, but with a clearer picture of my next move. The weather has been wild and soggy. While we were away, the skylight in my office space blew off, dumping a load of sawdust and rainwater onto one of the vacant desks, nearly obliterating one of my friends' work. It has since been fixed. Recently, during another late evening typing session, we could hear the Albion fans over at the stadium, their voices carried across campus by the wind. I'm at home right now, nice to be indoors on another wild night...

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A thousand miles south

A thousand miles south its still one o'clock

Its just hotter

As I sit on a plastic stool in the dust

Watching a woman chopping greens into

a plastic bowl

While a pot of oil steams on coals and branches

Red with foam

and a chicken avoids my gaze

I've been here before



Further south

on a fading spit of rock and sand

fishing boats all around

that man sat in chains;

who did the same and worse

and got

what he didn't deserve



Fishing boats all around

'Do you remember me?

Your friend, where have you been?'

Too late

We flee again

to cows cars

traffic

kids in the streets.




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