I recently came across this image online, and I liked it a lot.  The quote comes from an inspiring publication called ‘Life’s Little Instruction Book’ by the American author, H. Jackson Brown Jr, and for me it makes a lot of sense in the context of today’s globalised society.

Native English speakers often forget how lucky we are to be naturally fluent in a language that is widely considered to be the universal one, despite the fact that Chinese and Spanish speakers are more prevalent.  Yes, we learn foreign languages in school, but even as we might struggle trying to learn key sentences like, “Ich wohne in einem Reihenhaus” (I live in a terraced house) or “J’ai une chat qui s’appelle Fluff” (I have a cat called Fluff) we know that essentially, wherever we go in the world, we’ll probably never be too far away from somebody who can speak a bit of English, and can help us out if we really need it.   That’s the reality, but we should never take it for granted…

…Sadly, there have been numerous occasions in which I’ve been abroad and felt embarrassed by fellow Brits, who just steam-roll into shops or restaurants and start booming out requests in English, expecting an immediate response and showing visible frustration if one isn’t forthcoming.  How difficult could it be just to learn – at the very least – one simple translation of “Do you speak English?” before rattling along with an urgent order of steak and chips?  Not all of us can pick up foreign languages, I know I struggle (and was explicitly told NOT to do German A-Level by a horrified looking German teacher when I mentioned I was considering it); but one simple sentence is all it needs to take to distinguish between common courtesy, and latent ignorance.

I will always have the utmost respect for those who persevere at learning other languages to the point where you feel that you can hold a conversation with them that knows no boundaries.  When I did the volunteering out in Indonesia, I was the lucky one.  English was, again, considered the universal language of the project, and I was the only one for whom it was my native tongue.  I can honestly say that some of the best conversations I’ve ever had were whilst out there speaking with the Indonesians and the other trainees, who came from all over the world.  I felt able to speak amongst those people as I would around people from home, such was their impressive command of English, to the point where I would often forget about the language barrier altogether.  I could never imagine being able to speak another language as well as they did English, and for that I feel a sense of shame.  It’s one thing to know how to describe the town you live, or to explain that you enjoy going to the cinema on Fridays and eating ice-cream, but if that was the limit to which everybody could speak a different language, then the world would be nowhere near as multicultural or diverse a place as it is today.  There’s a whole chasm of difference between the lingual intensity of sentences like those, and the more complex sentences which form the majority of our conversations with our fellow Brits.

And so, relating back to the original quote, when people who have learned English as a second language might apologise to us for their broken sentences (perhaps in response to the kind of vitriolic Brits mentioned earlier, who are just cross that they’ve needed to repeat themselves a couple of times), I always find myself thinking that the apology would make far more sense coming from the other way around…

We should just be grateful for the fact they’re trying!

Song of the Day:  Rita Marley – So Much Things to Say

…The bit when she sings about how rain falls over multiple roofs – as opposed to just one – always springs into my mind whenever I find myself stuck in a heavy rain shower, as seems to have happened quite a few times this month 🙂  Lovely song…

This month, I couldn’t decide which particular topic to write about, so instead I’ve decided to write a brief bit about three nice elements from my Bank Holiday Weekend 🙂 Enjoy x

Moments of Nothingness…

Yesterday I took my bike out and went for an explore.  I didn’t really know where I was going, and looking back – I don’t even know where I really went – but I did, at one point, find a very nice spot of meadow upon which to sit and chill.  And so that’s what I did, for around twenty minutes or so.  Everything was silent, apart from a bit of breeze whispering through the grass.  A handful of people were out walking their dogs, but I couldn’t even hear a yelp.  There were cars in the distance, but they didn’t make a sound, they just… floated… like everything else around me at the time seemed to do.  It seemed that all I had for company were a few subtle rays of sunshine beating onto my shoulders, and the fresh scent of cow parsley.

It was all very peaceful and my little love affair with Kent intensified just a little bit more… what a wonderful place this can be for finding somewhere in which you can awaken the senses, and just ‘be’.

Moments of nothingness…
Nothing extraordinary to report;
Nothing ordinary to dismiss.
When I can lose myself in exploration of my thoughts…
Every day, needs a moment of nothingness…

And now for something of a somewhat different tone…

Can YOU see any ships?

It’s always the unscripted, random things in life that I find the most funny, and you can always rely upon a day out at an English Heritage site to experience something like that.

Today we visited Walmer Castle, a Tudor fort opposite the sea-front, near to Deal, that was constructed in the 16th century at the instruction of King Henry VIII.
In one of the castle’s many rooms, an old brass telescope stands on a tripod in front of a small window that overlooks the sea.  A sign stands next to it, “Can You See Any Ships?”.  The intention is obviously for a younger clientele to take a look through the instrument and activate their imaginations by believing that anonymous objects looming on the horizon are menacing French and Spanish ships, sailing over to invade.

It would have made for an interesting view I’m sure, but unfortunately all I got was a close-up of an elderly lady leaning against one of the bastions outside and looking dreadfully disappointed, most probably unaware that she was in the direct line of the telescope.

…It did make me chuckle…. and despite trying to intake as much as I could of Walmer Castle’s hundreds of years of fascinating history, the moody lady in the telescope will probably be the thing I remember the most.

And finally…

My mum recently brought down all her old family diaries from the attic for us to read through.  She’s kept a diary since the 1970s (clearly being the inspiration for me to keep my own, as I have done for nearly twenty years now), and I’m so glad she has.  Being still somewhat ‘young’, I have often believed and assumed my memory to be a good one, but reading through mum’s old diaries, I realise that there are many things that I have long since forgotten.  Some of the entries have also served to stitch additional patches to memories which within my mind are only fleeting, fractured and without context.

One such example is a fleeting memory I have of saying goodbye to my grandfather as he and my cousins got into a beige car outside of a house where the walls of the hall were peacock blue and seemed massively tall…  Reading the diaries, it turns out that this was actually a memory from a party held at my other grandfather’s house at 31 South Road, Faversham, during the Summer of 1988.  We had spent most of the afternoon in the back garden and I had played with a blonde-haired little boy called Ben who lived in the house next door.  Grandad Faversham had a miniature train and track in his back garden that people could ride down the garden on, and at the party there had – apparently – been a hidden tension between he and my mum over the fact that he was considering getting rid of it, much to mum’s disapproval.

The above occasion may not sound particularly notable, but reading back through the diaries it made me quite sad to think how susceptible our ‘memories’ are to a natural erosion over the years.  It’s nice to occasionally reminisce, and remember, and place everything into it’s context.  It’s interesting to look back and see – in daily detail – just how we ended up where we did.

I hope that one day somebody will find my diaries as interesting as I find my mum’s…

Song of the Day:  The Sugargliders – Ahprahran

Australian ‘twee pop’ from the early 1990s about life in a suburb of Melbourne called Prahran.  Pretty sweet stuff.

I am almost thirty years old.

In recent years a love of travel and a penchant for curiosity have lead me towards all kinds of adrenalin-induced danger;  I have taken nocturnal taxis in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, a city with one of the highest rates of homicide in the world, whilst drive-by shootings have actively been taking place.  I have been – unwittingly – near recruited into a Saudi harem off the coast of Egypt after making a naive decision with two friends, and I have traversed down Nicaraguan volcanoes on nothing but a sheet of second-hand formica.  I have been dining in West Sumatran cafes as minor earthquakes have taken place on the ground beneath my feet, and been hurled along the wild water rapids of the Ottawa river on a piece of foam…

… But when my mother requests that I go no further than the hotel bar as I enjoy a few Pelforths on the final night of our trip to Lille, France, I duly oblige.  As much as I’d love to be in the midst of the city, absorbing the Lille life for what it really is and scribbling observational notes about it accordingly, I am not about to disobey my mother.  To do so would present a guilt much more terrifying than any of the above, and so I remain enclosed in the sparse bar area of the Novotel hotel, on Rue de L’hopital Militaire, a few steps away from the Grand Place.

Initially, I am sceptical of the potential for this modern-looking space to provide me with the most encapsulating opportunities to do some observational writing, and my early experiences do little to suggest otherwise.  There is really not much going on.  A middle-aged trio are propped against the bar.  They speak in broken English and the only word I can really make out is, “money”.  Very little to go on, here…

The bar area is certainly nothing like the vibrant space that it was yesterday morning, when a group of teenage girls sporting navy tracksuit emblazoned with the word ‘France’, sat drinking coffee and taking selfies over bowls of Muesli, clearly on their way to a tournament of some sporting variety.  No, the bar is a very different place this evening, and I am not confident that I will be able to source much in the way of ‘writing material’, which is what I wanted to use the final night of my trip for.

“Well there are bound to be interesting people coming in and out of the hotel at all times,” Mum had earlier declared, in her valiant attempts to convince me that the creative writing spark of this particular trip could be ignited from within the security of a hotel, and not from behind the dusted doorway of a backstreet bar I had tiptoed into the day before in my search for cigarettes.  A gaunt man with a stubbled face had lead me back out onto the street to motion towards “le Tabac….. rouge……” – the only information required for me to spot the iconic red diamond-shaped logo of a tobacconist, several hundred yards along the road.  “This would be a great place to people watch, and write about it”, I had thought to myself as I’d entered the bar, but mum’s later plea was to pour cold water over that idea.

Completing a sentence in my notebook, I look at the table in front of me.  On top of it is a round, plastic device with four options on it – ‘Annuler’, symbolised by a cross, ‘Addition’, symbolised by a Euro sign, ‘Appel’, symbolised by a bell, and ‘Commander’ – symbolised by a human figure.  A line above the device helpfully translates that it’s purpose is to ‘Call us, we are coming’, and I realise that before me is installed another classic creation of the lazy 21st century.  “Look”, I point to mum, who is ensconced in her chick-lit novel.  She fails to see the value of the device.  “Why don’t you just go up and order?”.  She proffers a valid point, since the bar is a mere five metres away from us.  I agree with her sentiment, but also want to make the most of this magnificent machine.  Besides which, my feet are pained from the blisters caused by a much-betrodden pair of ill-fitting new boots, and right now, even just five metres seems like an ominous incline that I am loathed to trek at this moment in time.

I press the ‘Commander‘ button and within moments a tall lady with a perfectly-rounded bob approaches the table.  She genuinely appears delighted that she finally has something to do, and takes her time in preparing my fresh glass of Heineken, which comes back to me in the form of half-lager, half-froth.  Thankfully for this lady I am not one to judge.  I am instead mesmerised at the success of the plastic device, and hate myself for being so.

As I come across a pause in my flow of thought, mum is keen to point out that the author’s photo – as featured in the inset of the book she is reading – is similar in appearance to a family friend.  I have no idea to whom she is referring but hum along in agreement anyway.  Mum is clearly pleased with her observation.

It is at this point that I head outside for a cigarette.  Puffing on a representative of Pall Mall vertes, I muse on the disgusting nature of this habit and once again assert to myself that this is something I must quit.  “Once the holiday is over, no more cigarettes”, a voice within dictates.  However, I am a realist at heart, and concede that even should I dispose of an empty box at Ebbsfleet International upon our arrival home, it won’t be long before a pack of Sterling Fresh Taste finds its way into my bag.  Perhaps it’s time to try harder.

Back in my seat, mum is clearly still enthused in her book, scribed by the apparent double of family friend P.  She has but half a centimetre of pages left to pore through.

The hotel bar remains empty and this is proving not to be the source of creative inspiration I was planning it to be.  Oh, but maybe it is?  In sheer relaxation there is creativity to be found.  Just by being affixed to a piece of foreign furniture, in a foreign bar, in a foreign land, one can assert a sense of fresh interest and enthusiasm in the world.  And the truth is that this is probably the climate in which I feel most susceptible to allowing the rush of creativity to flood through my veins.

“I wish somebody would pay me to travel the world, and write about it”, I think to myself – and not for the first, second, third or even fiftieth time in my life.  But even then, in that most idyllic sounding of circumstances, I can envision that doing so would actually be quite a lonely job, with little scope to build a home.

I press the ‘Commander’ button on the small plastic device and feel a sense of guilt for the consequent pause in chatter between the two bar staff.

My index-finger has served as a reminder that there is work to be done.

Song of the Day: Locksley – The Way That We Go

Criminally under-rated Wisconsin band who describe their unique sound as “doo-wop punk” – what’s not to love?  This is the kind of song you can have on loop for days, and never get tired of.

There is really a whole lot more I could say on this matter, but I’ve got the Christmas Flu (which typically arrived on the big day itself), and at the moment it just feels like somebody’s shoved a cork in my brain.

But what I will say is that (sneeze) the above sentiment has been one that has become particularly apparent to me this year; when certain situations have reminded me of the complexities of human life – not just in terms of the things that can happen, but how they can make us feel inside…

Just remember – you are an individual human being.  You are the only you that exists in the world today, and both before – and after you have lived – regardless of how much time elapses… there will never be another you.

You are not just a gingerbread creation that was shaped by the same cutter used upon all the rest.  Don’t even try to be.  Because neither is anyone else, even though sometimes you might think that they are.

But that’s why we’re all so fascinating…

…Embrace it.  Enjoy it.  Because all too often, I think we forget it.

Song of the Day: AlgoRhythmiK – A Guide to Happiness

Another by-chance Spotify discovery, but this has definitely been one of my favourite tunes over the past few weeks. I have absolutely no idea how I could describe this music, apart from that it’s some of the strangest I’ve ever heard… but what I do know is that if the mash-up of old country ditty ‘Hamburger Hop’ with some electro-beats that starts at approximately 1:55 minutes into the song doesn’t make you want to want to dance, we’d probably be a bit of a mismatch when hitting the tiles…