kilo alpha kilo ... you'd better believe it!

*** UPDATE ***

Do not adjust your sets ... this is indeed an update.

Not a very exciting update, perhaps, but an update none the less.

Why, I hear you cry, have you been shirking your blogging responsibilities? What about us (read 'me') your reading public. We've been champing at the bit and yearning for words of wisdom and excitement as to your goings on. Some bon mots on the whys wherefores and whatevers of your crazy, fly by the seat of your pants life.

Alas, I wish my life was like that. At the moment I am stuck in a peculiar limbo between being here and not being here. I have things that I must do interspersed with periods of mind-numbing tedium, themselves interspersed with periods of thrills, spills and the excitement to which I had become accustomed. Those, alas, are too few and far between.

The 'not being here' aspect has been finalised and now I just wait, with the baited breath of proverbial fame, to find out a little bit more than I know at the moment, which is not much. I know that on the 2nd of March 2007 I will be boarding a plane to Cameroon. Where in Cameroon I don't know.

What I do know is that I am currently the proud owner of an innocuous bout of yellow fever as well as diphtheria (and no, there aren't too many 'h's), tetanus and polio ... who needs class A's when you've got the beginnings of a pandemic?

From what I've been told I believe that I am going to be living in a village of approximately 5,000 people, teaching in their secondary school and educating them in the ways and means of English, HIV and AIDS and also teaching their teachers a little bit of how to teach. Godola's the name, Maroua's the nearest big town and if you google earth the latter, I'm destined to be approximately 10km to it's east; that's to say the area of google earth that is uncharted ...

While I twiddle my thumbs in anticipation of training courses to tell me how to cope with change, how to work in development, how to teach teachers and how not to contract any number of curiously named afflictions that would win a game of Scrabble in one move, I find myself speaking to the local paper and begging people to sponsor me for one of any number of daft undertakings.

In other words, there's not a lot going on, and if there is it's happening slowly. I'm torn between wanting time to fly and not wanting it to pass at all. Not all of it that is. This beige, wishy washy and generally tofu-esque state I find myself in at the moment can get knotted quite frankly, but then the week after next can slow down, as can the new year and January, and then February too ... life though, being what it is, means that the obverse will be true and the in between bits will drag and the excitement filled parts will fly by with scant regard for me ...

-Ends-

... and another thing:

If you haven't read Ummit's most eloquent diatribe on the bane of modern life that is flying then this isn't so much "another thing" as a "thing". He reminded me of something I wrote en route to somewhere my bags were not going. And I quote ... myself:

---

It makes no sense.

The more you think about it, the less sense it makes.

There is no life-vest on transatlantic flights.

There you are, about to spend who knows how many hours somewhere above one of the world’s larger, continuous expanses of water at the hands of a disembodied voice - purporting to belong to someone called Larry - which in turn is in charge of x thousand tons of metal and a similarly large quantity of highly inflammable aviation fuel, and they can’t be arsed to do you the courtesy of pretending that you might survive an innocuous sounding 'splash-down'.

London’s legions of unlicensed cabs give most people the screaming heeby-jeebies, and you do at least have the luxury of knowing that they do actually exist - even if it is on a different moral plane (no pun intended) - yet there you are, putting your life in the hands of an invisible stranger, and all they give you to place your continued existence on “in the extremely unlikely event of a landing on water” is a flatulence ridden seat.

Perhaps the trapped gas, a necessary by-product of a high altitude diet of airline food, aids it’s bouyancy.

Hitting the water at the speed you are likely to be travelling, and from the height at which you are likely to be falling, whether it is water or precast, reinforced concrete is of little consequence. A hand full or two of fish flakes and a reddish tinge to the water would be the only actual evidence that you were ever actually there. On the off-chance that gravity does decide to intervene, is it wrong to want for more than just a glorified cushion on which to base ones hopes of survival?

What happened to the life-vest under the seat? The whistle to attract attention? The laughable wee flashing light and the top-up tube?

The shuttle flight from Glasgow to London offers even the most budget traveller a life-vest, and you are only over water for about 30 seconds in total, most of those being above Windemere which is a tough target to hit in the first place but has the distinct advantages of being comparatively small, vaguely swimmable, splendidly popular and decidedly shark-free.

If you’re given a life-vest with the threat as trifling as a glorified puddle then surely, worked out exponentially, everyone on a transatlantic flight should be given a life-raft complete with outboard motor, full scuba gear and a survival suit stowed under their seat.

Alas, one has to make do with just a cushion, permeated with the expulsions of other people’s softer ends to keep you afloat until either hypothermia, sharks or rescuers intervene. Why do they even bother? Next time, I’m taking water-wings and a lilo as carry-on baggage.

"Hey! Buddy! I got noos fo' yah: you suck ..." Thus spake the prophet

Start spreading the news
- A living cliche -
It's just a brand, "I ♥ NY"
New York, New York
Jazz, vagabonds, Jews,
the chic and the gay,
They all want a part of it,
New York, New York
How do you wake up, in a city that never sleeps?
You'll find you're sick and you're ill, lacking in sleep.
Each little town's views
are lost in the fray,
stuck in the melted heart of it
In new New York
If you can make it there
You'll make it, anywhere,
It's up to you, New York, New York.

And when you wake up in the city that never sleeps
You'll find the size of the meals, makes you feel weak.
Each little town's views
Are right there to stay,
Each one a gleaming part of it,
In cold New York
If you can't make it there
no-one will, really care,
It's up to you, New York, New York.

With distinct and heartfelt apologies to old blue eyes himself ... no offence meant and, for those who care, there will be more to follow.

Long see ... no time ...

Why? You may well ask. Since 6th July 2006 I have moved country three times, accomodation 4 times and am about to up both of those by a factor of one ...

Some would say I was nomadic. Others running from something. Both may be right. The what of the running from clause has yet to be determined though it's lack of form does have the effect of driving usually sane and sensible people of a parental variety into paroxisms of misunderstanding and anguish.

"But, but, but ... " they stutter, to which the only response is "Because, because, because ..." which then prompts an outburst of why's wherefore's etc.

While many of my peers find themselves soaring through the money laden skies of gainful but soul destroying employment, I instead find myself applying for a position that will pay me in a month what many of them make in an hour. Does it daunt me that I will soon, if all goes to plan, be making £40 a month? Of course it doesn't. Does it concern me that I will potentially be adding unexploded landmines to my list of commuting inconveniences? Should it? Does it fill me with angst and fear that I may well be spending the next two years in sub-saharan Africa ... me a fairskinned scot whose ability to endure extended periods of heat and sun would make an ice-cream look stubborn? Not really no ...

Twixt then and now stands a small amount of the unremarkable beast known as uncertainty, but the excitement of that uncertainty certainly keeps the juices flowing. Therein also stands a biggish apple ... woo and indeed hoo, if I may be so bold ...

"Specialist subject: the bleedin' obvious"*

What is it about no news weeks that inspires the vapid and all too mortal mariners on the good ship journalism to produce for us, their avid readers, the kind of mind-bogglingly unnewsworthy drivel and meaningless effluent that they seem to spout on a more and more regular basis.

Two weeks ago, there I was, quietly perusing Auntie's depths when I stumbled across this gem of scientfic publishing. My favourite line has to be "It is well known within the thunderstorm detection community that wearing or carrying metallic objects [during a thunderstorm] can increase the likelihood of injury."

As if that wasn't enough, I found today, in the aftermath of the only diving contest in which China haven't swept the board, this earthshattering insight into the world of International football: "Portugal coach Luiz Felipe Scolari said his side's inability to score was the reason for their World Cup semi-final exit at the hands of France in Munich. "

Whatever will they be telling us next? "Water discovered to be reason why beaches are wet in places"; "Girls different from boys".

I know that England are home, and Tiger Tim has been retired to a petting zoo, and the flush of post-ashes brilliance has turned out to be little more than nappy rash, but come on ... there must be something newsworthy going on, isn't there?

Too much time on my hands? Many would say so ... better that, though, than the alternative.

---

*Credit where it's due ... another hat doffing to Mr Cleese and his erstwhile other half Miss Booth.

"... hot enough to boil a monkey's bum"

"Third Bruce: Blimey, it's hot in here, Bruce.

First Bruce: Hot enough to boil a monkey's bum!

Second Bruce: That's a strange expression, Bruce.

First Bruce: Well Bruce, I heard the Prime Minister use it. "It's hot enough to boil a monkey's bum in here, your Majesty," he said, and she smiled quietly to herself.

Third Bruce: She's a good Sheila, Bruce, and not at all stuck up."

My hat is duly doffed to the chaps of Monty Python ...

to doff. A verb that doesn't get enough of an airing these days I feel. Since those halcyon days of hat wearing, when doffing was the bane of a persons life, the verb has seemingly sidled into an anonymous siding, like the fat bloke on the team who's forever shouting out his team-mates names in the hope of getting the ball, only to be passed it in a prime goal scoring position and then shy maniacally at it only to see it miss by a margin that was more than was humanly possible to imagine given his proximity to the goal line.

Not really I know, but still, we'll let the analogy pass.

Write to your local ombudsman; petition your MP ... "Doff, because your worth it."

A thought for a Thursday post-meridien: if you can doff your hat, and by association your clothes, does that mean that dedoffing is putting them on in the first place? "I dedoffed this morning but managed to put my pants on back to front.", "I had to dedoff in the dark which is why I'm wearing odd socks."

Odin's day

You've got to love the cross cultural brilliance of what we in the west have adopted as the basis of our calendar system.

I mean is there anywhere in the world where Norse and Roman gods live side by side with egotistical Roman Emperors in a house whose walls are dictated by the universal wanderings of a large ball of flammable gases and a spherical lump of rock.

And to think that we wake up to this bizarre amalgamation every morning and barely even draw breath. In fact for the most part a minor gastric eruption is about as excited as we get, and even that seldom provokes comment.

What does it all mean?

Absolutely nothing, and that's the beauty of it.

There comes a time in every man's life, when he decides to inflict himself upon the collective global conscience, in a medium entirely foreign to those denizens of chronicling antiquity - Pliny, Pepys to name a couple - and in a manner that is both presumptious and egotistical. Presumptious because let's face it, without broadcasting that this exists, who in their right mind is going to either find it or indeed read it, and egotistical because it is all about me!

Who am I? That is a very good question. I am the person tapping this presently beige keyboard, filling this patch of virtual real-estate with little more than the cranial flatulence that is the by product of a mind such as mine. A mind that is at once over worked and under used. A mind who when lost in the folds of the A-Z of logical thought would prefer to amble directionless through the backstreets of partial lunacy.

What do I do? I attempt to educate ... make of that what you will. A hat. A brooch. A pterodactyl.

Where do I do it? Wherever I feel the urge. Presently in a boot shaped peninsular of European persuasion in the fashion capital of the world where bling is a byword for good taste and sunglasses are compulsory even in subterranean clubs at stupid o'clock in the morning.

Do you know me? How am I supposed to know that? Either you do, or you don't.

Time marches on it's stomach and so I must make like a heartless croquet fanatic, and post ...